Senator Roland Flores, sponsor of Senate Bill 626, told the Senate Committee on Health & Human Services the bill would preserve an eight-hour initial training requirement on identifying patient abuse or neglect for new staff at inpatient mental-health and rehabilitation facilities, and reduce the continuing-employee annual refresher requirement from eight hours to three hours.

Flores said the current annual eight-hour refresh is often redundant and pulls staff away from patient care; the bill would maintain initial training but require only three hours of annual refreshers so staff can spend more time on clinical duties while preserving the program’s purpose.

The committee closed public testimony on the bill and left it pending.