BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
2541 (Portantino/Fletcher)
Hearing Date: 8/2/2010 Amended: 6/24/2010
Consultant: Katie Johnson Policy Vote: Health 8-0
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BILL SUMMARY: AB 2541 would require locally-based clinical
laboratories to report required information on HIV infections
electronically to the California Department of Public Health.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 Fund
CDPH add HIV module $75 ongoing minor andGeneral
to ELR system absorbable
Additional federal Cost pressure in the hundreds
ofGeneral
funds due to increased thousands to millions of dollars
HIV case reporting in non-federal matching funds
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STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to the
Suspense File.
This bill would require locally-based clinical laboratories to
report required information on HIV infections electronically to
the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). Current law
requires laboratories to transmit reports on all other
reportable diseases and conditions electronically, but
explicitly excludes HIV from electronic reporting. In order for
CDPH to receive these electronic reports, it would need one-time
resources of approximately $75,000 General Fund in FY 2010-2011
to add an HIV/AIDS reporting module to its California Reportable
Disease Information Exchange/Electronic Laboratory Reporting
(ELR) system. Since local laboratories currently use this ELR
system to report electronically on all other diseases, costs to
local labs would likely be minor.
Additionally, in regards to an existing state law that requires
health care providers and laboratories to report cases of HIV to
local health officers by name, which are then in turn submitted
to CDPH, for the purposes of ensuring knowledge of HIV trends
and that California remains competitive for federal HIV and AIDS
funding. This bill would additionally require that health care
providers and local health officers transmit cases of HIV
infection to CDPH by specified methods: courier service, United
States Postal Service express mail or registered mail, other
traceable mail, person-to-person transfer, facsimile, or
electronically.
This bill also would require that CDPH implement this provision
within existing resources. Since this reporting requirement is
already in law and it is reasonable that
local providers and health officers use one of the prescribed
methods of information submission, costs would likely be minor
and absorbable to all parties.
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AB 2541 (Portantino/Fletcher)
To the extent that this bill furthers the goal of making
California competitive in obtaining federal HIV/AIDS funding,
there could be additional federal Ryan White Act and Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding available due to an
increase in the number of HIV infections reported to CDPH, on
which funding allocation is based. The Ryan White Act funds
would require state matching funds. While CDPH's Office of AIDS
has sufficient General Fund resources that could act as a
non-federal match for any additional federal funds, those
General Fund resources would then be unavailable to match other
federal funds, such as Medicaid funds, and that would constitute
a General Fund cost pressure likely in the hundreds of thousands
to millions of dollars.