Report Title:
Dialysis Centers; Backup Generators
Description:
Requires the department of health to review emergency plans and develop guidelines of all dialysis centers in the State to ensure the safety of dialysis patients in the event of a public emergency; requires the department to post on its website a list of all dialysis centers in Hawaii that have backup emergency generators with the capacity to sustain dialysis treatments and maintain their water treatment system. (SD1)
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THE SENATE |
S.B. NO. |
1178 |
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TWENTY-FIFTH LEGISLATURE, 2009 |
S.D. 1 |
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STATE OF HAWAII |
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A BILL FOR AN ACT
RELATING TO HEALTH.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:
SECTION 1. The legislature finds that Hawaii has a forty per cent higher prevalence rate of patients diagnosed with end‑stage renal disease than the rest of the nation. The National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii estimates that six hundred twenty patients are newly diagnosed with end-stage renal disease every year in Hawaii. Patients suffering from end-stage renal disease are most often put on dialysis treatment, a medical treatment that filters waste from the patients' blood when the kidneys are no longer able to do so. The treatment takes hours and usually requires three treatments a week.
As of December 2008, the State has twenty-two federally certified dialysis centers, not including those within hospitals, and many are operating at close to full capacity. Only one of the off-hospital dialysis centers has a backup emergency generator, and yet, even that system was not prepared to run its water treatment system with low water pressure. The two requirements that are crucial to the operations of dialysis treatment are electricity and water.
As a result of the recent power outages in the State, many dialysis patients were forced to miss their regular treatment appointments, which put them at serious risk for blood poisoning.
The purpose of this Act is to require the department of health to review the emergency plans of all dialysis centers in the State and to post on the department's website a list of all dialysis centers in Hawaii that have backup emergency generators with the capacity to sustain dialysis treatments and maintain their water treatment system.
SECTION 2. The department of health shall review emergency plans and develop guidelines of all dialysis centers in the State to ensure the safety of dialysis patients in the event of a public emergency. The department shall post on its website a list of all dialysis centers in Hawaii that have backup emergency generators with the capacity to sustain dialysis treatments and maintain their water treatment system.
SECTION 3. The department of health shall submit a report to the legislature no later than twenty days prior to the convening of the regular session of 2010, identifying each dialysis center and its emergency plan operating in the State.
SECTION 4. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.