O.C.G.A.

O.C.G.A. § 37-7-21 (2019)

Discharge of voluntary patients upon recovery or termination of need for hospitalization; notice of discharge

✓ O.C.G.A. — 2019 edition (Public.Resource.Org Release 73)
Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.
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(a) The chief medical officer of the facility shall discharge any voluntary patient who has recovered from his alcoholism, drug dependency, or drug abuse or who has sufficiently improved that the chief medical officer determines, after consideration of the recommendations of the treatment team, that hospitalization of the patient is no longer necessary, provided that in no event shall any such patient be so discharged if, in the judgment of the chief medical officer of such facility, such discharge would be unsafe for the patient or others. The chief medical officer may designate in writing a physician or psychologist, who may be the attending physician or treating psychologist, to make these discharge decisions. If the decision of the designee is contrary to the recommendations of the treatment team or a physician or psychologist member of the treatment team, the issue must go to the chief medical officer for final determination. Where there is concurrence, the decision of the designee will be final.

(b) Notice of discharge of patients who have been transferred from involuntary to voluntary status shall be given pursuant to Code Section

History

Code 1933, § 88-404.2, enacted by Ga. L. 1971, p. 273, § 1; Code 1933, § 88-403.2, enacted by Ga. L. 1978,

p. 1856, § 1; Ga. L. 1991, p. 1059, § 4; Ga. L. 1992, p. 1902, § 16.

Notes of Decisions
Cited in 2 cases, 1998–1999 · leading case: Wingate v. Ridgeview Inst., Inc., 504 S.E.2d 714 (Ga. Ct. App. 1998).
Wingate v. Ridgeview Inst., Inc., 504 S.E.2d 714 (Ga. Ct. App. 1998). · cites it 4× “OCGA § 37-7-20(a) states that once a person is found to be suitable for treatment for alcoholism, "such person may be given care and treatment at such facility; and such person may be detained by such facility until discharged pursuant to Code Section 37-7-21 or 37-7-22."…”
Ridgeview Inst., Inc. v. Wingate, 520 S.E.2d 445 (Ga. 1999). · cites it 4× “First, the analysis used by the Court of Appeals would leave a voluntary patient admitted for “treatment” without any statutory discharge rights short of recovery, see OCGA § 37-7-21 (a). Moreover, Wingate’s admission for treatment is clearly contemplated by OCGA § 37-7-20 (a),…”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.