Update on "Infection Control Officer"

​Under legislation passed last year, ESDs or their service providers must designate an Infection Control Officer and notify the local health authorities and local hospitals of the Infection Control Officer's contact information. 

The Infection Control Officer must have "a health care professional license or specific training in infection control."  ESDs or service providers may need to train someone for this position or contract with someone to do this. The Infection Control Officer "acts as liaison between the entity and the destination hospital, and monitors all follow-up treatment provided to the affected emergency response employee or volunteer.
 
The new law and rule "require a licensed hospital to notify a health authority and designated infection control officer in certain instances when an emergency response employee or volunteer may have been exposed to a reportable disease during the course of duty from a person delivered to the hospital under conditions that were favorable for transmission." 

An emergency response employee or volunteer is defined as "an individual acting in the course and scope of employment or service as a volunteer as emergency medical service personnel, a peace officer, a detention officer, a county jailer, or a firefighter." 

The reportable diseases are:  

• chickenpox; diphtheria; measles (rubeola); novel coronavirus causing severe acute respiratory disease; novel influenza; pertussis; pneumonic plague; smallpox; pulmonary or laryngeal tuberculosis; and any viral hemorrhagic fever, if the worker and the patient are in the same room, vehicle, ambulance, or other enclosed space;

• Haemophilus influenzae, invasive; meningitis; meningococcal infections, invasive; mumps; poliomyelitis; Q fever (pneumonia); rabies; and rubella, if there has been an examination of the throat, oral or tracheal intubation or suctioning, or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation;
  
  
• acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS); anthrax; brucellosis; dengue; ehrlichiosis; hepatitis, viral; human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection; malaria; plague; syphilis; tularemia; typhus; any viral hemorrhagic fever; and yellow fever, if there has been a needlestick or other penetrating puncture of the skin with a used needle or other contaminated item; a splatter or aerosol into the eye, nose, or mouth; or any significant contamination of an open wound or non-intact skin with blood or body fluids;
  
  
• amebiasis; campylobacteriosis; cholera; cryptosporidiosis; Escherichia coli O157:H7 or other Shiga toxin-producing E. coli infection; hepatitis A; poliomyelitis; salmonellosis, including typhoid fever; shigellosis; and Vibrio infections, if fecal material is ingested;
  Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) wounds, skin infections or soft tissue infections, if there has been contact of non-intact skin to these infections or drainage from these infections; and
  
  
• any other reportable disease or a disease caused by a select agent or toxin identified or listed under 42 C.F.R. §73.3, if there has been an exposure via the usual mode of transmission of that disease as determined by the department or the local health authority.

 
DSHS adopted the final rule adopted June 24 . (Texas Register June 24, 2016)(25 TAC 97.11).  The statutory reference is Health and Safety Code Section 81.012.  

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