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Roundtable Topic: Accounting for border babies, home births, and adopted babies in EHDI programs
Session: 2:45 PM
Moderator: Jennifer Hill (West Virginia)
Summary
Attendance: Ten participants, representing nine states. (West Virginia, Iowa, Missouri, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Vermont, Indiana and Idaho)
None of the states represented in this round table have any formal, legally binding cooperative agreements with their bordering states. Missouri and Idaho reported having some informal verbal agreements with a few border hospitals/state(s).
We all agreed to the following:
- Clarification is needed on how HIPAA applies to cooperative agreements between states. (Is there information in the Public Health Clause in regards to the sharing of information?)
- There is a need for guidelines, recommendations and/or policy statements regarding border agreements.
- We need to know our own state's legal limitations/requirements to sharing information.
- We need to understand the laws and restrictions of our border states.
- Question: Do we need official agreements?
We made the following suggestions for establishing cooperative agreements with Border States:
- Establish contact with essential personnel from Border States.
- Utilize NCHAM Regional Representatives to assist in establishing contacts and setting up meetings.
- Utilize conference calls.
- Enlist the assistance of the state hospital associations.
- Establish some type of release form for the birth state to release information to the state of residence. Can this release become part of every hospital's standard release form?
- Regardless of which infant hearing screening/testing they are having done (initial, follow-up, or diagnostic), have all parents who take their babies out of state for these tests to sign a release to send results to their state of residence EHDI Program.
The topic of how to deal with "At Home Births" was also discussed. The following suggestions were presented:
- Utilize your local health nurses.
- West Virginia: Have "Home Birth Kits" which are distributed via OBGYNs, pediatricians and the "Right from the Start" Program.
- Missouri: Recommend establishing linkages with the spiritual leaders of groups in your state that have high rates of at home births.
- Idaho: They have well established child find coordinators in all regions. They have connections with midwifes who agree to refer parents to the local community centers. The community centers or child development centers have trained personnel and equipment to do infant hearing screenings. The equipment was purchased utilizing federal funds.
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