I meant to be back at the blog last week, but my Christmas vacation, but I ended up being out longer than anticipated due to illness. Anyways, I am back and hope to post even more regularly this year.
With that said, a friend forwarded me an e-mail from her nursing association list serve that brings up even more areas for home health, home care, and hospice to be worried about in 2010. According to a recent online Q&A with Secretary of Labor Solis, OSHA (the federal agency, not the state level agency) is looking at airborne infectious disease and patient safe handling issues for its regulatory agenda in 2010.
Secretary of Labor Solis stated that OSHA will publish a request for information in the federal register in March. OSHA's standard would likely require health care employers to protect health care workers from SARS, tuberculosis, and influenza. OSHA issued an enforcement directive on H1N1 in November. You can download it here.
Secretary Solis was asked during the Q&A if the OSHA standard would be modeled on the California standard. Solis replied that the California standard "would certainly be one important piece of information that OSHA will consider in deciding whether to propose or issue a standard."
Although during the Q&A the Secretary did not specifically commit to such a standard, the fact that they did state a request for information would be published in the Federal Register indicates they will move forward with this. Responding to that request for information will be important. This is the first opportunity the industry will have to share its thoughts (read objections) with the Department of Labor.
Providers should keep a close eye on this and be prepared to respond to the DOL. A national standard on protecting employees form airborne transmissible diseases is likely to be fairly burdensome to home care and hospice providers.
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