Our state is lucky to have possibly the most comprehensive and up-to-date set of on-line legislative materials in the country. It will be well worth your time to spend a few minutes getting familiar with the rich collection of tools that are available without charge.

The Texas Legislature Online (TLO) is a great starting point for locating changes in health law that have been enacted from the 71st Legislature (1989) to the present. Through this site and the search engines linked to it, you can locate prior versions of a bill, the complete legislative history (with links to the House and Senate Journals), committee reports, fiscal notes, witness lists, etc. Here are links to some of the more useful search engines and indexes:

The complete process by which a bill becomes a law, with relevant links to databases for every step, is described here.

You can track the progress of a bill you're following, or search for bills by subject heading, keywords, advanced text search, etc. You can obtain up-to-the-minute lists of bills that have passed the House or the Senate or bills that have been signed or vetoed by the governor. You can also receive e-mailed updates when anything happens to the bills you are tracking. All of these features and more are described at this FAQ page.

The on-line version of Texas statutes is generally updated during the February following the close of the session. Until the updates are posted, the current version can be updated from the "Index to Sections Affected" page.

There's even an incredibly useful page with bill-chapter and chapter-bill cross-references going back to the 29th Legislature in 1905-06.