HB 1477 -- Missouri Hospital Infection Control Act

Sponsor:  Schaaf

This bill creates the Missouri Hospital Infection Control Act of
2004.  The bill:

(1)  Authorizes the Department of Health and Senior Services
to issue subpoenas in order to investigate complaints and
potential infection outbreaks in hospitals;

(2)  Gives infection control officers the authority to require
hospitals to terminate a practice or procedure which does not
meet the standard of care for the prevention of hospital
infections;

(3)  Requires hospital infection surveillance measures and
procedures to be adequate to detect nosocomial infections;

(4)  Requires all suspected infection outbreaks to be reported to
the department;

(5)  Requires all hospitals to adopt evidenced-based infection
control policies which will be subject to review by the
department;

(6)  Prohibits hospital personnel in a managerial position from
restricting hospital employees from discussing any aspect of care
with an agent of the department concerning potential hospital
infection issues or complaints;

(7)  Requires medical facilities to perform a root-cause analysis
on all identified cases of death or a major permanent loss of
function resulting from a nosocomial infection and report the
analysis to the department.  Methicillin- and vancomycin-
resistant infections are also required to be reported.  The
department is required to maintain a database of the common
issues and root causes;

(8)  Requires the department to develop rules to implement the
bill and requires that all information collected be confidential;
and

(9)  Requires that on-site surveys of hospitals by
non-governmental entities who evaluate the quality of health care
delivered will be unannounced.  Unannounced survey results will
not be used to issue statements about the quality of the hospital
surveyed.

Missouri House of Representatives
92nd General Assembly, 2nd Regular Session
Last Updated September 23, 2004 at 11:15 am