June 8, 1999
Dear Colleague:
We recently introduced HR 1899, The Health Care Worker Needlestick Prevention Act and we are writing to urge your cosponsorship of this important legislation. Protecting health care workers from needlestick injuries that can cause severe illness and/or death, is not only the right thing to do from a humane perspective, it also saves money.
The technology exists today to prevent most of the more than 800,000 needlesticks that occur yearly to our nation's health care workers. HR 1899 would protect health care workers from accidental needlesticks by requiring the use of safe needles and needleless systems in the health care arena (with an exception process that recognizes that these products are not available and appropriate for all uses today). It does this by amending the bloodborne pathogens standard in the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). HR 1899 is modeled after a California bill that was signed into law by then-Governor Pete Wilson.
California's state Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently conducted a cost analysis of their state law and found that based on a conservative analysis of the law, it will save California health facilities some $100 million annually.
That same study shows that some 96,000 California health care workers are injured by needlesticks annually. The cost for immediate diagnosis and treatment for each injured health care worker was estimated to range from $2,234 to $3,832, which includes prophylactic treatment. In relation to these costs, the median increase in cost for a safe needle device is 24 cents.
For less than the up front cost of a postage stamp, we can prevent spending thousands of additional dollars to test and treat health care workers who should never have been injured in the first place, and we can prevent senseless deaths.
If you would like to cosponsor HR 1899, or would like more information,
please call Debbie Curtis with Rep. Stark at 5-5065, or Elizabeth Robbins with
Rep. Roukema at 5-4465.