Alabama Administrative Code
Title 420 - ALABAMA STATE BOARD OF HEALTH
Chapter 420-4-1 - NOTIFIABLE DISEASES
Section 420-4-1-.07 - Notification Of Pre-Hospital/Emergency Medical Service Personnel

(1) The chief administrator of a hospital, or his or her designee, shall notify pre-hospital agencies and emergency medical service personnel of a patient's contagious condition.

(2) Pre-hospital and emergency medical service personnel shall be notified by the hospital administrator, or his or her designee, when a patient which has been transported by said pre-hospital transport personnel and is diagnosed during the current hospitalization as having a notifiable disease transmissible through the respiratory route. Such notification shall apply only to the pre-hospital personnel involved with the on-scene care or in the transportation of the patient to the current hospitalization. Such notification shall occur within 24 hours after the diagnosis of said respiratorily transmitted notifiable disease.

(3) Notification of the presence of an infectious agent transmissible by blood and body fluids shall occur only upon the documentation of an exposure to pre-hospital or emergency medical service personnel in a manner consistent with transmission of said infectious agent. Documentation of said exposure shall be made in writing within 72 hours of the exposure.

(4) Upon receipt of said documentation showing an exposure consistent with a medically recognized method of transmission, the hospital administrator, or his or her designee, shall provide, in writing, to said exposed individual information which has been previously obtained in the routine healthcare of the patient or obtained during the current hospitalization, about the presence of infectious diseases in the patient transmissible through blood and body fluids. Such notification shall be provided within 24 hours after the diagnosis of said blood and body fluid transmissible notifiable disease.

(5) Nothing in these rules shall be interpreted to require a hospital, physician, or other medical provider to perform any test for infectious disease other than that which would be performed in the routine treatment of the patient.