BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1812
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Date of Hearing: March 25, 2014
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HEALTH
Richard Pan, Chair
AB 1812 (Pan) - As Introduced: February 18, 2014
SUBJECT : Health facilities: information: disclosure.
SUMMARY : Authorizes the Office of Statewide Health Planning and
Development (OSHPD) to release confidential hospital
patient-level data to the United States Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS) and its subsidiary agencies and the
Veterans Health Care Administration, under specific data use
agreements.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Establishes OSHPD, and requires each organization that
operates, conducts, or maintains a health facility to make and
file with OSPHD certain specified reports, including a
hospital discharge abstract data record that currently
includes 19 elements of data per admission that are required
to be included.
2)Requires hospitals, commencing January 1, 2004, to file with
OSHPD an emergency care data record and an ambulatory surgery
data record, each with 15 elements of data per patient.
3)Authorizes the release of OSHPD confidential patient data for
research, public health, and healthcare operations to two HHS
agencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and
to California-licensed hospitals, local public health
departments, and local public health officers.
4)Requires the disclosure of confidential patient data to be
consistent with federal regulations relating to the privacy of
health information.
FISCAL EFFECT : This bill has not been analyzed by a fiscal
committee.
COMMENTS :
1)PURPOSE OF THIS BILL . According to the author, OSHPD hospital
AB 1812
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inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department patient-level
data is a primary source of information on population health,
utilization of healthcare services, and disease surveillance.
Authorizing OSHPD to release confidential hospital
patient-level data to the additional federal entities will
allow them to better assess population health needs in
allocating federal funds, publicly reporting geographic,
demographic, or other variations in healthcare and in
developing interventions to improve population heath.
2)BACKGROUND . In 1980 the Legislature authorized OSHPD to
collect hospital inpatient discharge data from California
licensed general acute care hospitals, and 1998 amendments
authorized collection of hospital emergency department patient
data and outpatient ambulatory surgery clinic patient data.
This data, as reported to OSHPD, are deemed confidential
personal information and not available to the public in its
raw form. A variety of extracts, summaries, and de-identified
public use files are prepared from these data and disseminated
by OSHPD. However, many potential uses for the patient data
require access to and use of data elements that are deemed
confidential. The release of such confidential data is
provided for by law, but only under strictly controlled
circumstances and only to specified entities.
Since 1980 OSHPD has released confidential data subsets for
scientific research to the University of California and other
non-profit educational institutions under the auspices of the
Information Practices Act.
3)PREVIOUS LEGISLATION .
a) AB 1382 (Pan), Chapter 599, Statutes of 2013, updates
obsolete terminology in existing statute used in the
reporting of health data information by specified health
facilities to OSHPD in order to be consistent with national
standards.
b) AB 2876 (Frommer), Chapter 434, Statutes of 2004,
authorizes the release of OSHPD confidential patient data
for research, public health and healthcare operations to
CDC and AHRQ, and to California-licensed hospitals, local
public health departments, and local public health
officers.
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c) SB 680 (Figueroa), Chapter 898, Statutes of 2001,
revises the schedule and expands the number of reports
OSHPD is required to publish on risk-adjusted outcomes,
added physician outcomes for those reports on surgical
conditions or procedures, and permitted OSHPD to obtain all
data elements reasonably necessary to complete the
risk-adjusted outcome reports required.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file.
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Lara Flynn / HEALTH / (916) 319-2097