Copyright 1999 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San
Francisco Chronicle
NOVEMBER 9, 1999, TUESDAY, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 731 words
HEADLINE:
U.S. to Check Hospitals, Clinics On Needle Safety;
Federal inspectors
given authority to penalize health-care facilities
BYLINE: William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writer
DATELINE: NATION
BODY:
In
a major step toward preventing potentially deadly needle injuries, the U.S.
Department of Labor has issued a directive to its safety inspectors that will
allow them to impose sanctions on health care facilities that do not employ new
safe-needle devices.
The directive to U.S. Occupational Safety and
Health Administration inspectors represents the first serious action by the
federal government in years to reduce accidental needle sticks
that injure as many as 800,000 medical workers each year.
"We must do
everything we can to protect workers who may be at risk of exposure to
blood-borne diseases," Labor Secretary Alexis Herman said in a statement
accompanying the new order. "It reminds employers that they must use readily
available technology in their safety and health programs." The federal directive
establishes a minimum level of scrutiny for hospitals and other facilities
nationwide, notifying them that safer needle devices are available and that
employers must begin using them or face penalties.
"The compliance
officer," the order says, "should investigate whether the employer has
instituted alternative engineering controls and work practices to eliminate or
minimize employee exposure in areas where exposure incidents have been
documented."
In its most pointed language, the order says citations
should be handed out "for failure to use engineering/work practices as discussed
above."
But the nation's biggest health care worker union, the Service
Employees International Union, complained that the new inspection orders are not
strong enough.
"This is an important step," said SEIU President Andrew
Stern, "but the OSHA language is vague and doesn't go far enough. The single
best way to protect health care workers is by passing more state laws and
ultimately a federal law."
CALIFORNIA'S REGULATIONS
California
passed its own legislation last year ordering health facilities and public
safety agencies to switch to safe needles. The new law followed a series of
Chronicle articles disclosing that thousands of medical workers have contracted
HIV and hepatitis B and C from needle sticks while needle devices have been
available that could have prevented the infections.
The new California
rules, the first of their kind in the nation, went into effect July 1. In the
past year, more than a dozen states have followed suit by drafting similar
legislation.
Pending in Congress is a law, modeled in part on
California's regulations, that would make it mandatory for health care and
public health employers to use safe needles.
The new OSHA directive does
not directly order facilities to provide safety needles, but instead
reinterprets an existing OSHA standard that requires the use of "engineering
controls" to reduce needle sticks and other such injuries.
OSHA is
hamstrung by bureaucratic procedures that prevent the agency from quickly
changing the 1992 Bloodborne Pathogen Standard to require mandatory use of
safety needles. Such a change would take several years, and Herman stated
recently that OSHA would begin the formal process of amending the standard soon.
The new directive allows the agency to act immediately by relying on the
standard's requirement that employers update their safety procedures annually to
keep pace with technological change.
RANGE OF SAFE NEEDLES
OSHA
notes that in 1992, few brands of safety needles existed. Since then, the
directive says, "there has been a substantial increase in the number and
assortment of effective engineering controls available."
The American
Hospital Association, which has opposed legislation requiring safe needles,
recently sent a thick guide to its hospital members outlining a step-by-step
program for full-scale training in the use of safety needles and follow-up
medical procedures if a needle prick occurs.
"We always felt that
legislation was unnecessary," said Rick Wade, spokesman for the hospital
association. "We wanted OSHA to step in and use the power it already has.
They're still sitting around in Washington talking about a law. This is better
and sooner."
But safe-needle advocates are concerned that hospitals may
challenge the new OSHA directive and succeed in getting it thrown out in court.
They insist a federal law is still necessary, and last month Herman said she
also supports federal legislation mandating safe needles.
LOAD-DATE: November 9, 1999
