ENROLLED
COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE
FOR
H. B. 4418
(By Delegates Perdue, Hatfield, Long, Boggs,
Staggers, Varner and Hamilton)
[Passed March 4, 2008; in effect ninety days from passage.]
AN ACT to amend the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, by
adding thereto a new section, designated §16-5B-17, relating
to healthcare-associated infection reporting; establishing an
advisory panel; establishing panel responsibilities;
establishing limitations on use of information; establishing
that all hospitals shall report; establishing that the Health
Care Authority will make the data available to the public and
to Bureau of Public Health; providing an implementation date
for hospital reporting; and penalties.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, be amended
by adding thereto a new section, designated §16-5B-17, to read as
follows:
ARTICLE 5B. HOSPITALS AND SIMILAR INSTITUTIONS.
§16-5B-17. Healthcare-associated infection reporting.
(a) As used in this section, the following words mean:
(1) "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention" or "CDC"means
the United States Department of Health and Human Services Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention;
(2) "National Healthcare Safety Network" or "NHSN" means the
secure Internet-based data collection surveillance system managed
by the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the CDC, created
by the CDC for accumulating, exchanging and integrating relevant
information on infectious adverse events associated with healthcare
delivery.
(3) "Hospital" means hospital as that term is defined in
subsection-e, section three, article twenty-nine-b, chapter
sixteen.
(4) "Health care-associated infection" means a localized or
systemic condition that results from an adverse reaction to the
presence of an infectious agent or a toxin of an infectious agent
that was not present or incubating at the time of admission to a
hospital.
(5) "Physician" means a person licensed to practice medicine
by either the board of medicine or the board of osteopathy.
(6) "Nurse" means a person licensed in West Virginia as a
registered professional nurse in accordance with article seven,
chapter thirty.
(b) The West Virginia Health Care Authority is hereby directed
to create an Infection Control Advisory Panel whose duty is to
provide guidance and oversight in implementing this section. The advisory panel shall consist of the following members:
(1) Two board-certified or board-eligible physicians,
affiliated with a West Virginia hospital or medical school, who are
active members of the Society for Health Care Epidemiology of
America and who have demonstrated an interest in infection control;
(2) One physician who maintains active privileges to practice
in at least one West Virginia hospital;
(3) Three infection control practitioners, two of whom are
nurses, each certified by the Certification Board of Infection
Control and Epidemiology, and each working in the area of infection
control. Rural and urban practice must be represented;
(4) A statistician with an advanced degree in medical
statistics;
(5) A microbiologist with an advanced degree in clinical
microbiology;
(6) The Director of the Division of Disease Surveillance and
Disease Control in the Bureau for Public Health or a designee; and
(7) The director of the hospital program in the office of
health facilities, licensure and certification in the Bureau for
Public Health.
(c) The advisory panel shall:
(1) Provide guidance to hospitals in their collection of
healthcare-associated infections;
(2) Provide evidence-based practices in the control and
prevention of healthcare-associated infections;
(3) Establish reasonable goals to reduce the number of
healthcare-associated infections;
(4) Develop plans for analyzing infection-related data from
hospitals;
(5) Develop healthcare-associated advisories for hospital
distribution;
(6) Review and recommend to the West Virginia Health Care
Authority the manner in which the reporting is made available to
the public to assure that the public understands the meaning of the
report; and
(7) Other duties as identified by the West Virginia Health
Care Authority .
(d)Hospitals shall report information on healthcare-associated
infections in the manner prescribed by the CDC National Healthcare
Safety Network(NHSN). The reporting standard prescribed by the CDC
National Healthcare Safety Network(NHSN), as adopted by the West
Virginia Health Care Authority, shall be the reporting system of
the hospitals in West Virginia.
(e) Hospitals who fail to report information on
healthcare-associated infections in the manner and time frame
required by the West Virginia Health Care Authority shall be fined
the sum of five thousand dollars for each such failure.
(f) The Infection Control Advisory Panel shall provide the
results of the collection and analysis of all hospital data to the
West Virginia Health Care Authority for public availability and the Bureau for Public Health for consideration in their hospital
oversight and epidemiology and disease surveillance
responsibilities in West Virginia.
(g) Data collected and reported pursuant to this act may not
be considered to establish standards of care for any purposes of
civil litigation in West Virginia.
(h) The West Virginia Health Care Authority shall report no
later than January 15 of each year to the legislative oversight
committee on health and human resources accountability, beginning
in the year two thousand eleven. This yearly report shall include
a summary of the results of the required reporting and the work of
the advisory panel.
(i) The West Virginia Health Care Authority shall require
that all hospitals implement and initiate this reporting
requirement no later than the first day of July, two thousand nine.