Health Care Professional's Corner

Every Florida County Health Department (CHD) has the responsibility to investigate cases of communicable disease. The Florida Bureau of Epidemiology relies on CHD’s, healthcare providers, laboratories and other public health personnel to report the occurrence of notifiable diseases. Without this timely surveillance data, trends cannot be accurately detected or monitored, and unusual disease occurrences and outbreaks might be missed, delaying appropriate public health control efforts.

Florida Statute Section 381.0031 (1,2) (161kb; pdf) states that, “Any practitioner, licensed in Florida to practice medicine, osteopathic medicine, chiropractic, naturopathy, or veterinary medicine, who diagnoses or suspects the existence of a disease of public health significance shall immediately report the fact to Department of Health.“ Also, it states in Section 381.0031 (5), “The department may obtain and inspect copies of medical records, records of laboratory tests, and other medical-related information for reported cases of diseases of public health significance.”

HIPAA

Often, health care providers are reluctant to divulge patient information citing the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, otherwise known as HIPAA. It is important to note that Public Health Reporting is EXEMPT from HIPAA. According to HIPAA S160.203, “disease reporting, public health disease surveillance, and disease intervention activities are among those EXEMPT from federal preemption of state laws.”  Thus, medical providers who allow the health department to obtain patient information cannot be held liable for the records disclosure.  Please share this information with your staff to ensure timely data collection for the protection of the public’s health.  Below are some helpful websites and numbers in reference to the above topic.

Resource websites for information about all aspects of HIPAA:

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services

Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation

The Florida Medical Association

Reportable Disease List

The list of reportable diseases has recently been updated as a new Florida Administrative Code 64D-3 (246kb; pdf) became effective on November 24^th, 2008.  These updates represent issues that have come to light since the adoption of an extensive rewrite in November of 2006. The current changes further clarify reporting and testing requirements for healthcare providers, laboratories, hospitals and other entities required to report communicable diseases or conditions that affect public health. A letter from the Florida Department of Health to all state healthcare providers was sent out to alert about the changes made to the Florida Administrative Code 64D-3. 

The Epidemiology Program of the Escambia County Health Department is making the Reportable Diseases/Conditions list available to all county providers

Reportable Diseases/Conditions List:  Reportable Disease List (76kb; pdf)

Healthcare providers can report diseases and conditions listed above to the Epidemiology Program by either faxing a reportable disease form or calling the following numbers:

Reportable Diseases/Conditions Form:  Single Disease Report Form (143kb; pdf)

Communicable Disease Report: Communicable Disease Report (18.6kb; pdf)

Communicable disease reporting and public health emergency

Phone (850) 595-6683

Fax (850) 595-6268

On-call (after hours, weekends and holidays) (850) 418-5566

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