Medical and Hospital Negligence Deaths in Austin, TX Chapter 74 Notice, Reports and Caps

Sixty days of notice, and 75 days of tolling

Section 74.051 requires written notice by certified mail to each physician or health care provider at least 60 days before filing suit, accompanied by the authorization form for release of protected health information. Subsection (c) tolls the applicable limitations period for 75 days following that notice. Subsection (d) requires the provider to furnish unaltered copies of requested records within 45 days. Subsection (e) is the provision that matters after a death: a request for records of a deceased person is valid where the authorization is signed by a parent, spouse or adult child.

The expert report deadline is unforgiving

Section 74.351(a) requires service of one or more expert reports, with each expert's curriculum vitae, not later than the 120th day after each defendant's original answer is filed, absent written agreement to extend. A defendant must object to sufficiency within 21 days of service or the answer, whichever is later, or waive objections. Where no report is served in time, subsection (b) requires the court to act on motion, and subsection (c) allows a single 30-day extension to cure a deficient report. Subsection (s) stays discovery until the report is served, apart from records acquisition, and subsection (u) permits no more than two depositions before service.

Two limitations rules, running side by side

Section 74.251 sets the health care liability period at two years from the occurrence of the breach or tort, or from the last date of the relevant course of treatment or hospitalization. Section 16.003(b) runs a death action from the date of death, and section 16.062 suspends limitations for twelve months after death, ending earlier if an executor or administrator qualifies within that period. A death following a long hospitalization can therefore present two different anchor dates in the same file.

Ceilings that apply specifically to death cases

Section 74.301 caps noneconomic damages at $250,000 per claimant against physicians and providers other than a health care institution, $250,000 against a single institution, and $250,000 per institution with a $500,000 aggregate where more than one institution is liable. Section 74.303 is the wrongful death and survival provision: all damages, including exemplary damages, are limited to $500,000 per claimant, adjusted up or down by the change in the CPI-W since August 29, 1977, and subsection (c) exempts past and future medical, hospital and custodial care expenses from that limit.

Who counts as a health care provider

Section 74.001 supplies the definitions that decide whether chapter 74 applies at all, including the definitions of health care institution and health care provider. That classification determines which cap in section 74.301 applies, whether the expert report requirement is triggered and how the notice provision operates. Claims that look like ordinary negligence, such as a fall or a security failure inside a facility, are frequently recharacterized as health care liability claims, and that recharacterization brings the chapter 74 machinery with it.

The Austin provider landscape adds public defendants

Travis County has a hospital district: Central Health was created by county voters in 2004 to fund and coordinate care for residents with low incomes. A district, a public teaching program or a county facility can put governmental immunity into a medical case, which pulls in chapter 101 with its caps in section 101.023, its notice provision in section 101.101 and the irrevocable election in section 101.106. Chapter 74's requirements do not disappear because the defendant is public.

An in-hospital death may still be an examiner case

The Travis County Medical Examiner's guidance explains that deaths occurring less than 24 hours after admission to a hospital fall within the categories the office accepts, along with deaths that are unexpected or attributable to an unnatural cause. An examiner file can therefore exist alongside the chart, with its own toxicology and its own timeline. Nothing here is legal advice about any treatment or death, and a specific medical file belongs with the attorney who advertises on this site.