Existing law establishes the State Department of Public Health and sets forth its powers and duties, including the administration of provisions relating to the prevention and control of communicable diseases. Existing regulations require certain communicable diseases to be reported to local health officers by health providers, using a uniform Confidential Morbidity Report (CMR).

Existing law, the Information Practices Act of 1977, regulates the collection and disclosure of personal information regarding individuals by state agencies, except as specified. Under existing law, a person who willfully requests or obtains a record containing personal information from an agency under false pretenses or a person who intentionally discloses medical, psychiatric, or psychological information held by an agency is guilty of a misdemeanor.

This bill would require the department to create a program to provide expedited release, during a declared public health emergency, of specified health care data to researchers at a bona fide research institution of higher education, as defined. The bill would require the department to make the specified data available promptly, and on an ongoing basis, only to qualified researchers who sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the department agreeing to use the data only for public health research purposes, to not disclose it to any other party, and to keep all personal information confidential. The bill would require each individual researcher who accesses or obtains nonpublic personal data through the program to sign an MOU, and would make a violation of the MOU a misdemeanor under the Information Practices Act of 1977. Because a willful violation of an MOU would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The bill would require the department, within one business day of agreeing to an MOU, to publish the MOU in full and make it available, along with specified information, to the general public on its internet website. The bill would require the program to create a special Institutional Review Board to review requests submitted under the program and would require the program to approve or reject the requests within 15 days of receiving a completed application.

This bill would also require that any report of a communicable respiratory disease by a health care provider to a local health officer and any electronic tool used by a local health officer for the purposes of reporting cases of a communicable respiratory disease include information on the type of housing where the patient resides, the number of people in the patient’s household, the occupation and workplace of the patient, and a relevant travel history based on the disease course. The bill would make implementation of its provisions subject to an appropriation by the Legislature. To the extent that this bill would increase the duties of local health officers, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that with regard to certain mandates no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.

With regard to any other mandates, this bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs so mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.