2025 · Regular session · House bill
HB1700
HB1700 requires the agencies regulating covered remote health services to adopt rules standardizing consent-record formats and retention.
Official caption: Relating to certain records of a health professional providing a telemedicine medical service, teledentistry dental service, or telehealth service.
Official report lists House author(s): Fairly, Shaheen, Frank, Howard, Morales, Eddie. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.
Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.
Bill highlights
Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.
- HB1700 requires the agencies regulating covered remote health services to adopt rules standardizing consent-record formats and retention.
- The rules must address the consent documentation appropriate to each type of service and include provisions for documenting consent in an audio-only format, based on the appropriate standard of care.
- Existing law already requires informed consent before covered services and protection of patient confidentiality.
What does it do?
HB1700 requires the agencies regulating covered remote health services to adopt rules standardizing consent-record formats and retention. Those records concern a patient’s consent to treatment, data collection and data sharing. The law took effect September 1, 2025 and covers telemedicine, teledentistry and telehealth within Occupations Code Chapter 111. Final law.
The rules must address the consent documentation appropriate to each type of service and include provisions for documenting consent in an audio-only format, based on the appropriate standard of care. This is a rulemaking requirement about documenting consent—not blanket authorization to provide every treatment by telephone or to collect or share any data a provider chooses. The act itself does not prescribe a particular consent form, a fixed number of years to keep it, or a separate rule-adoption deadline. Final law, Section 1.
Existing law already requires informed consent before covered services and protection of patient confidentiality. It also applies the standard of care for the equivalent in-person service. Chapter 111 expressly excludes mental health services, an important limit on describing this as a rule for all remote care. HB1700 does not repeal that exclusion or the separate requirements for establishing a practitioner-patient relationship. Occupations Code 111.002, 111.003, 111.005, 111.007 and 111.008.
What changed along the way?
The history records a House committee substitute, but the operative text of all five available versions—introduced, House committee, House-passed, Senate committee and enrolled—matches. The official floor-amendment index says the bill has no amendments. No different substantive proposal was found in those available texts, and there was no conference rewrite. The final law retains both the three consent categories and the audio-only documentation requirement. Versions; amendments; history.
For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.
Official bill versions
Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.
Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?
Patients could benefit from clearer records of what they agreed to, including when consent is documented by audio. Providers and regulators could benefit from more consistent documentation, while practices may need to update workflows, record storage and staff training to comply with their regulator’s rules. The act does not promise lower prices, new insurance coverage or universal eligibility for audio-only treatment.
The May 13, 2025 fiscal note anticipates no significant state or local-government fiscal impact, assuming agency costs can be absorbed with existing resources. It supplies no dollar estimate or quantified two-year or five-year forecast and does not quantify private providers’ compliance costs.
Scope of this briefing: This explains the enacted rulemaking duty, not whether every affected licensing agency has completed its implementing rules.
Official sources
- Bill history and latest recorded action
- Bill versions, analyses and fiscal notes
- Action history and votes
- Amendment index
Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.
