Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Mortality Review topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee debates fetal and infant mortality review panel bill amid privacy and open-records concerns; bill tabled
Summary
House Bill 1637 would create a fetal and infant mortality review panel under the State Department of Health and includes exemptions to open-meetings and public-records laws; health-department official Dr. Edney argued protections are needed, but several senators said the exemption language is too broad. The committee voted to lay the bill on the table subject to call.
The committee considered House Bill 1637, a health-department companion bill to an unintroduced senate measure that would establish a fetal and infant mortality review panel and include specific exemptions under the Open Meetings and Public Records Acts. "This is a bill from the health department... It's a very simple bill that creates a fetal and infant mortality review panel under the Department of Health," the chair said when introducing the measure.
Senator Blunt pressed the committee for clarity on the proposed exemptions, saying the language beginning on line 352 was hard to follow and could exempt meetings where reports, data, findings or recommendations are discussed from the Public Records Act. "It seems to suggest that a meeting regarding performance improvement at which reports, data or findings or recommendations are discussed would be exempt from the Public Records Act," Senator Blunt said, and urged that the language be narrowed to avoid overbroad exemptions.
Dr. Edney, introduced by the committee as a representative of the State Department of Health, defended the protections. He said the department's mortality- and morbidity-review work gathers very sensitive, often facility-specific information that hospitals have historically protected from discovery, and argued that without similar protections at the state level hospitals might refuse to cooperate. "We are gathering very sensitive information... we need the same protections with the health department's internal reviews," Dr. Edney said. He also told the committee that running mortality-review operations is not free, estimating annual costs "between 100 to 200,000 a year" and noting the department has sought federal grants to support similar work.
Other senators, including Senator Wiggins and Senator Hill, pressed on distinctions between privacy and secrecy, the limits of executive sessions, and whether HIPAA compliance or statutory compulsion of records could achieve the department's goals without broad exemptions. After extended discussion, Senator Blunt moved to lay the bill on the table subject to call to allow further consideration; the chair called a vote and recorded that "the ayes have it," tabling the bill for future review.
The committee did not adopt the bill during this meeting; members asked for additional scrutiny of the exemption language and for further detail on costs and safeguards.
