New York Consolidated Laws, Public Health Law - PBH § 2805-l. Adverse event reporting

1. (a) All hospitals shall be required to report events described by subdivision two of this section to the department in a manner and within time periods as may be specified by regulation of the department.

(b) For purposes of this section, “hospital” means any general hospital or diagnostic and treatment center.

(a) patients' deaths or impairments of bodily functions in circumstances other than those related to the natural course of illness, disease or proper treatment in accordance with generally accepted medical standards;

(b) fires in the hospital which disrupt the provision of patient care services or cause harm to patients or staff;

(c) equipment malfunction during treatment or diagnosis of a patient which did or could have adversely affected a patient or hospital personnel;

(d) poisoning occurring within the hospital;

(e) strikes by hospital staff;

(f) disasters or other emergency situations external to the hospital environment which affect hospital operations; and

(g) termination of any services vital to the continued safe operation of the hospital or to the health and safety of its patients and personnel, including but not limited to the anticipated or actual termination of telephone, electric, gas, fuel, water, heat, air conditioning, rodent or pest control, laundry services, food or contract services.

(a) analyze event reports, findings of the investigations, their root cause analyses, and corrective action plans to determine patterns of systemic failure in the health care system and identify successful methods to correct these failures; and

(b) communicate to facilities the department's conclusions, if any, regarding event reports, patterns of systemic failure, and recommendations for corrective action resulting from the analysis of submissions from facilities; and may release, in a format that does not identify specific patients and does not provide reasonable basis to believe that the information can be used to identify a patient; (i) analyses and findings derived from the adverse event data to hospitals or the public and (ii) adverse event data to researchers for patient safety research projects approved by the commissioner, subject to any terms and conditions imposed by the commissioner concerning the security and confidentiality of the data and their use; and provided that no such data, record, documentation or action subject to subdivision two of section twenty-eight hundred five-m of this article, shall be subject to disclosure under article six of the public officers law nor article thirty-one of the civil practice law and rules.

(a) medical and social history, and examination of the patient;

(b) preservation of evidence and chain of custody;

(c) questioning of the patient's family, guardian or person in parental authority;

(d) circumstances surrounding the injury resulting in death;

(e) determination of the cause of death;

(f) notification of law enforcement personnel; and

(g) reporting requirements under title six of article six of the social services law.