50 Pa. Stat. § 4102

Current through P.A. Acts 2023-32
Section 4102 - Definitions

As used in this act:

"Administrator" means the person appointed to carry out the duties specified in section 305 of this act.

"Aftercare" means services rendered to a person after his release from a facility, designed to assist such person in establishing and maintaining himself as a member of society, including foster home placement, home visiting, observation, halfway houses and outpatient care.

"Attorney for the Commonwealth" means district attorney, the Attorney General, or any attorney representing the interests of the Commonwealth.

"Benefit period" means, with respect to any individual, a period of consecutive days beginning with the first day not included in a previous benefit period on which he is furnished inpatient hospital care, and ending with the last day of the first sixty-day period thereafter during each day of which he is not an inpatient in a hospital.

"County" means a county, or a first class city.

"County program" means a mental health and intellectual disability program established by a county or two or more counties acting in concert and includes a complex of services providing a continuum of care in the community for the mentally disabled.

"Department" means the Department of Public Welfare.

"Designated facility" means a State operated facility named by the department, or other facility named by the administrator, for certain purposes or as a place of reception.

"Director" means the administrative head of a facility and includes superintendents.

"Facility" means any mental health establishment, hospital, clinic, institution, center, day care center or other organizational unit, or part thereof, which is devoted primarily to the diagnosis, treatment, care, rehabilitation or detention of mentally disabled persons.

"Inpatient services" means diagnosis, evaluation, classification, care, treatment or rehabilitation rendered to a mentally disabled person admitted or committed to a facility for a continuous period of twenty-four hours, or longer.

"Intellectual disability" means significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning that is accompanied by significant limitations in adaptive functioning in at least two of the following skill areas: communication, self-care, home living, social and interpersonal skills, use of community resources, self-direction, functional academic skills, work, health and safety. The onset must occur before the individual's twenty-second birthday.

"Issuing authority" means any public official having the power and authority of an alderman, justice of the peace or magistrate.

"Local authorities" means the county commissioners of a county, or the city councils and the mayors of the first class cities, or two or more of these acting in concert.

"Mental disability" means any mental illness, mental impairment or mental deficiency, which so lessens the capacity of a person to use his customary self-control, judgment and discretion in the conduct of his affairs and social relations as to make it necessary or advisable for him to be under care as provided in this act. This term shall not include senility, unless mental illness or an intellectual disability is superimposed.

"Mental hospital" means a residential facility for the diagnosis, care and treatment of the mentally disabled other than those with intellectual disabilities.

"Outpatient services" means diagnosis, evaluation, classification, counseling care, treatment or rehabilitation rendered under this act at a facility, to a mentally disabled person not admitted or committed thereto.

"Partial hospitalization" means diagnosis, evaluation, classification, care, treatment or rehabilitation rendered to a mentally disabled person admitted or committed to a facility for some portion of one or more twenty-four hour periods.

"Physician" means a physician licensed to practice in Pennsylvania.

"Psychiatrist" means a physician who by years of study, training and experience has achieved professional recognition and standing in the field of psychiatry.

"Psychologist" means a person who by years of study, training and experience has achieved professional recognition and standing in the field of clinical psychology.

"Secretary" means the Secretary of Public Welfare.

"Social worker" means a person who by years of study, training and experience has achieved professional recognition and standing in the field of social work.

50 P.S. § 4102

1966, Special Sess. No. 3, Oct. 20, P.L. 96, art. I, § 102, effective 1/1/1967. Amended 2011, Nov. 22, P.L. 420, No. 105, § 2, imd. effective.