Pennsylvania requires older adult living centers to establish policies and procedures for reporting unusual incidents and cases of abuse or suspected abuse.1 Employees and administrators of various residential, home, and long-term care facilities must immediately report suspected instances of abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and serious bodily injury to, depending on the circumstances, a protective services agency, department of public welfare and/or law enforcement officials.2 Information contained in these abuse reports is confidential, but may be disclosed in limited circumstances (e.g. investigation, court order).3 This confidentiality protection extends to information maintained by certain home or nursing service providers regarding the abuse or neglect of persons over the age of 60.4 Local providers of protective services must transmit reports to the department of aging that regard occurrences of sexual abuse, serious bodily injury, and suspicious deaths in certain home and nursing care facilities.5

        Within 24 hours of a serious event or incident, health care workers submit a report in compliance with their facility’s patient safety plan. The facility must subsequently notify an affected patient within 7 days of the discovery of an event or occurrence.6 Medical facilities must report serious events and incidents to the department of health and patient safety authority.7

        Information obtained and generated by a health care facility’s patient safety committee or governing board that relates to patient safety is confidential. However, the department of health may access serious event reports for licensing and corrective action purposes.8

        Pennsylvania requires hospital pharmacies to maintain records regarding adverse drug reactions and sensitivities for a minimum or two years9 while ambulatory surgical facilities must record patients’ adverse drug reactions and sensitivities in their medical record.10 Additionally, hospitals performing open heart11 surgeries and cardiac catheterizations12 must keep, and submit to the department of health, data regarding mortality/morbidity, infections, complications, and risk factors. Health care facilities and providers must submit data regarding patient morbidity, patient severity, and unusual occurrences on a quarterly basis to the Health Care Cost Containment Council.13 The Health Care Cost Containment Council will use the information to generate provider quality reports that include comparisons on mortality rates, infection rates, and complication rates.14