(a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(1) Early knowledge of infection with communicable disease is important in order to permit exposed persons to make informed health care decisions as well as to take measures to reduce the likelihood of transmitting the infection to others.
(2) Individual health care providers, agents and employees of health care facilities and individual health care providers, and first responders, including police, firefighters, rescue personnel, and other persons who provide the first response to emergencies, frequently come into contact with the blood and other potentially infectious materials of individuals whose communicable disease infection status is not known.
(3) Even if these exposed individuals use universal infection control precautions to prevent transmission of communicable diseases, there will be occasions when they experience significant exposure to the blood or other potentially infectious materials of patients.
(b) Therefore, it is the intent of the Legislature to provide a narrow exposure notification and information mechanism to permit individual health care providers, the employees or contracted agents of health care facilities and individual health care providers, and first responders, who have experienced a significant exposure to the blood or other potentially infectious materials of a patient, to learn of the communicable disease infection status of the patient.
(Added by Stats. 2002, Ch. 342, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2003.)