The department of social and health services and the department of health are authorized to charge fees for services provided unless otherwise prohibited by law. The fees may be sufficient to cover the full cost of the service provided if practical or may be charged on an ability-to-pay basis if practical. This section does not supersede other statutory authority enabling the assessment of fees by the departments. Whenever the department of social and health services is authorized by law to collect total or partial reimbursement for the cost of its providing care of or exercising custody over any person, the department shall collect the reimbursement to the extent practical.
RCW 43.20B.020
Fees for services—Department of health and department of social and health services.
Applied in 6 court decisions — leading case In Re Dependency of Schermer (2007)
Most recently applied in Pierce County v. State (May 2008)
1991 c 3 s 295; 1981 1st ex.s. c 6 s 25
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.