Fact Sheet
H. 969 An Act Relative to Needlestick Injury Prevention

H. 969 An Act Relative to Needlestick Injury Prevention is crafted to add engineering controls to needlestick and sharps instruments in the delivery of health care. This will prevent injuries and reduce the incidence of exposure to communicable diseases for all health care employees.

The bill designates a working Advisory Committee within the Department of Public Health to perform a number of duties designed to:

• utilize the best technologies
• share the best information and
• demonstrate a reduction in the incidence of needlestick and sharps injuries in the workplace.

The Department of Public Health would promulgate rules and regulations to reduce needlestick and sharps injuries or exposure incidents by mandating:

• training and education for health care workers;
• increasing participation in Hepatitis B immunization programs;
• creating a list of better engineered systems designed to protect health care workers that the hospitals and other employers would use as a guide in purchasing equipment.

The facilities would be required to:

1. make the devices available wherever feasible;
2. include sharps injury prevention technology as an engineering practice in the work place; these engineering controls would be employer specific to meet the needs of their patients and the services they provide;
3. develop a written exposure control plan utilizing the information promulgated by the Advisory Committee;
4. develop and implement an exposure incident log, which would record the type and brand of device involved. This provision will aid in the quality improvement that will emanate from the data. The incidents of needle and sharps injuries would need to be reported to DPH only for the purposes of accumulating information to design prevention strategies that would be applied across employment situations and would be used in educational efforts;
5. lastly, the exposure control plan would need to be updated to reflect progress in implementing the sharp prevention technology as specified by the Advisory Committee and the Department of Public Health as promulgated by those regulations.