Congress calls for OSHA to add needle-safety bite to blood-borne pathogen standard

With this year being an election year, Congress wants healthcare organizations to know it gets their point about needlestick protection legislation so both sides of the federal legislature introduced twin bills on needle-safety.

The House of Representatives went first. Rep. Cass Ballenger (R—NC), chairman of the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, and Rep. Major Owens (D—NY), the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, introduced the "Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act," or H.R. 5178, on Sept. 14. The bill calls for the provision of needlestick protections under the bloodborne pathogens standard issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Within a week, Sen. James Jeffords (R—VT) introduced S.B. 3067, a bill that uses identical language to amend OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard and guarantee healthcare workers access to safety-engineered devices.

Both bills follow on the heels of a June 22 hearing, spearheaded by the Workforce Protections Subcommittee and chaired by Ballenger, which examined the revised OSHA Bloodborne Pathogen Compliance Directive implemented in November 1999.

The legislation directs OSHA to formally modify its 1991 Bloodborne Pathogen Standard. The bill, like the OSHA Compliance Directive, requires that employers use "sharps with engineered sharps injury protection features" and "needleless systems" to reduce the risk to healthcare workers of occupational exposure to HIV, hepatitis C and other bloodborne pathogens. It also requires that employers solicit the input of non-management employees who are responsible for direct patient care and who are potentially exposed to contaminated sharps in identifying, evaluating and selecting effective engineering and work practice controls.

The bill requires healthcare facilities to update and review their exposure control plans to reflect changes in technology, such as safety-engineered devices, and maintain a log of accidental needlesticks.

The bill also requires employers to maintain a sharps injury log to contain, at a minimum:

The information would be recorded and maintained in a way that would protect the confidentiality of the injured employees. The log would be an important source of data for researchers to determine the relative effectiveness and safety of devices now on the market and those that may be developed in the future.

The American Nurses Association (ANA) praised the House and Senate for its actions, noting that this legislation will protect healthcare workers from the approximately 800,000 needlestick injuries that occur in the United States annually. (See related article: ANA applauds new needlestick protections legislation.)

ANA member Karen Daley, R.N., MPH, president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, testified at Ballenger's subcommittee hearing on this issue in June.

Daley spent more than 25 years as a front-line caregiver and staff nurse at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She left clinical practice in January 1999 due to a needlestick injury that resulted in her contracting both HIV and hepatitis C. Since that time, Daley has become an advocate for legislation to mandate use of safer needle devices in healthcare practice settings.

"This injury and the life-altering consequences I am now suffering should not have happened," Daley said. "And worst of all, this injury did not have to happen and would not have happened if a safer system had been in place in my work setting."

A tougher federal rule will buttress similar legislation passed by 16 states, starting with California. For a complete list of state needle-safety legislative activity, click here.

Edited by Rick Dana Barlow
Managing Editor, Hospital Network.com