Pending legislation
There are now 2 bills (one in the House, HB 1224, and one in the Senate, SB1321) that will require us to inform an agency (to be named later) when oxygen cylinders are delivered. After speaking with several individuals in Springfield yesterday, it seems likely that this will become law. There has been a lot of discussion (among ourselves) about the "unworkability" of the proposal, but if we're going to participate in the development of this thing, we need to start kicking around ideas of how we can affect the final outcome.
We're going to have to move quickly, so what are your thoughts?
Maybe we should do an e-mail blast to all of our members. It could contain a link the proposed regulation and to this forum conversation.
Let's hold off a little while. I'm meeting with some people in Springfield today. I should have a lot better idea of what's going on. We'll combine that with what John learned when he was in Springfield earlier in the week, and from there we should have a sense of where to go from here. I'll post here when I get back this afternoon.
Apparently Senator Maloney is planning on "calling" his bill next week. The LL at theState Fire Marshall's Office (who is extremely supportive of this bill) is pretty sure that the bill has all the support it needs for passage.
We had a very productive meeting, and I think we'll have good opportunities to affect the final outcome (as it applies to our industry). I was somewhat surprised at the lack of logistic research that's been done, but, since we'll be the ones doing the work, we have the incentive to analyze its impact on our operations. That's the sort of thing that's not high priority for them.
The LL that I met with, George Korda, is a retired ex-chief from the Chicago FD. He was very open to suggestion, and repeatedly mentioned that he wanted to make the procedure as easy to comply with as possible and did not want to create onerous responsibilities for our industry.
One area that surprised me - the bill's authors appear to have failed to take HIPAA into consideration at all. He will be working with the state legal department to determine what type of waiver/exemption/etc. is possible. He definitely understands the difficulty of our position in trying to comply with this law while not running afoul of a federal one, and realizes the reporting requirement is not doable in the absence of some exemption.
His office has been working under the assumption that the local fire chiefs will be handling the database. I don't know if that idea has been disseminated much yet, but the fire departments I have contacted are not interested in shouldering that responsibility.
After some discussion of the magnitude of the activity that would need to be reported, he acknowledged that a simple, one-time notification of delivery and location would be sufficient, rather than a reporting of all deliveries, including size and quantity. When I asked about our liability in the case of a transient patient, he stated that he felt we should not be held liable if we reported a change of address as soon as it became known to us.
It also appeared that not a lot of thought had been devoted to the database to be used. Mr. Korda had envisioned a procedure whereby we asked the patient which fire department covered their area and then notified the appropriate department by fax or email. He stated that the Senator is adamant that the Premise Alert Program (PAP) and the emergency dispatch system (911) be used to accomplish the intent of the bill (I could determine no real reason why he wants the PAP involved, but it has to be part of the 911 system to work at all.) He is also convinced that a placard of any kind would invite predatory activity, so he is absolutely opposed to that approach.
I suggested that, if the PAP database could interact with the 911 emergency system, it would be much more efficient. My idea is to create a portal through which we could enter data periodically. We could enter the address and let the 911 system determine which responding jurisdiction is appropriate, much like the system does when it makes contact in an actual emergency. That way, we could assign a staff member to enter set-ups and pick-ups weekly, and we would not be potentially liable for the failure of someone else to enter our data. In addition, it would create a state-wide, standardized procedure for compliance. This should eliminate the potential nightmare associated with each of us trying to comply with a variety of procedures dictated individually by each fire protection district where we set up an oxygen patient. (How many different ones are in your service area, John? 75? 175? 375?)
Mr. Korda was very receptive to the idea, and will be speaking with the appropriate agencies to determine if this approach is feasible. He will be emailing me changes to the bill as they're made, and I'll post them here.
