ATLANTA — A bill that would trump visitation restrictions and allow patients to have a family member by their bedside during public health emergencies passed the House Monday after emotional debate.

House lawmakers debated for more than an hour, but eventually voted in favor of the bill that has been called the “most important” piece of legislation they will consider this session.

The measure allows a patient to have at least one “designated legal representative” who can visit them for at least one hour each day to help make decisions about their care.

After the pandemic shuttered hospitals and nursing homes to visitors, keeping families apart for months, proponents argued that governments and health care facilities cannot keep loved ones from their family members.

Acworth Republican Ed Setzler, sponsor on the bill, told lawmakers on the floor that the bill does not dictate hospital and nursing homes’ visitation policies, but addresses the access to patients for family who help them make decisions when they can’t.

“It’s not about visitors — it’s about patients’ rights,” Setzler said. “It gives the patient the right to have their next of kin at their bedside to help them make critical decisions in the delivery of care.”

Medical facilities would still have full control over the details of their visitation policies, Setzler said. But without this effort, he added people like his own 82-year-old father-in-law, who was hospitalized in Gwinnett County after a heart attack, would have to face decisions — like undergoing bypass surgery — alone.

The legislation was considered in multiple committee meetings and went through dozens of revisions. Lawmakers faced the challenge of weighing concerns from hospitals about infection control measures and emotional testimony that patients are left alone and unable to make tough medical decisions by themselves.

Valdosta Republican John LaHood, who operates multiple assisted living homes in South Georgia, said when individuals grow older, “their priorities change.”

“Time with family and loved ones becomes much more meaningful when your time is running low. When you’re in your last years, months, days or moments of your life,” he said, noting he spoke on behalf of long-term residents in the state.

“This is more than about keeping people alive, this is about giving them a reason to live,” he continued. “Avoiding death is not the same as living life.”

Suwanee Republican Rep. Bonnie Rich detailed an experience when she was in the hospital with a severe illness and the comfort she had having her husband by her side.

“This bill was written in response to the best efforts we made to respond to the pandemic and we learned from it,” she said. “This bill was written so we never again do to people what we have done this year.”

Under the measure, the governor’s emergency powers wouldn’t override a patient’s right for a legal representative.

But opponents argued the bill hurts efforts to control widespread and fatal infectious diseases. Snellville Democrat Rebecca Mitchell, an epidemiologist, said on the floor the measure prevents medical facilities from keeping staff and designated representatives safe from contagious patients.

“HB 290 as it went into Rules does not sufficiently acknowledge infection control as an essential element to keeping Georgians safe at an individual and a population level,” she said.

But even the Speaker of the House David Ralston unexpectedly took to the well to support the bill. He recounted a constituent who asked for his help to see his wife who was dying in a hospital, something Ralston couldn’t accomplish under the current emergency rules.

“Sometimes you just got to do what’s right,” he said of voting for the bill.