Pennsylvania Statutes Title 35 P.S. Health and Safety § 7606. Certification of significant exposure and testing procedures

(1) Whenever an individual health care provider or first responder experiences an exposure to a patient's blood or bodily fluids during the course of rendering health care or occupational services, the individual may request an evaluation of the exposure, by a physician, to determine if it is a significant exposure as defined in this act. No physician shall certify his own significant exposure or that of any of his employees. Such requests shall be made within 72 hours of the exposure.

(2) Within 72 hours of the request, the physician shall make written certification of the significance of the exposure.

(3) If the physician determines that the individual health care provider or first responder has experienced a significant exposure, the physician shall offer the exposed individual the opportunity to undergo testing, following the procedure outlined in section 5.  1

(1) In the event that an exposed individual health care provider or first responder is certified to have experienced a significant exposure and has submitted to an HIV-related test, no testing shall be performed on a source patient's available blood unless the certifying physician provides a copy of the written certification of significant exposure to the source patient's physician or institutional health care provider in possession of the available blood and the source patient's physician or institutional health care provider has made a good faith effort to:

(2) The source patient's physician or institutional health care provider that receives a certification of significant exposure shall begin to comply with the request within 24 hours. If the source patient's physician or institutional health care provider is unable to secure the source patient's consent because the source patient or the source patient's substitute decisionmaker refuses to grant informed consent or the source patient cannot be located, the source patient's physician or institutional health care provider shall arrange for an entry to be placed on the source patient's medical record to that effect. If these procedures are followed and the entry is made on the source patient's medical record, then HIV-related tests shall be performed on the source patient's available blood if requested by the exposed individual health care provider or first responder who has submitted to an HIV-related test.

(3) The physician ordering the HIV-related test on a source patient's available blood on behalf of the source patient's physician or institutional health care provider shall comply with section 5(c) through (e).

(4) The health care provider or first responder shall be notified of the results of the HIV-related test on the source patient's blood if the health care provider or first responder's baseline HIV-related test is negative. Further disclosure of the test results is prohibited unless authorized under section 7.  2