SB 678 - This act requires hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, and long-term care facilities to report all "serious reportable events in health care," as identified by the National Quality Forum. Such events include wrong-site surgery, retention of a foreign object in a patient after surgery, and death or serious disability associated with medication error. The procedures for such health care facilities reporting the events to the Department of Health and Senior Services are prescribed in the act. The initial report of the event shall be reported to the department as reasonably and practically possible, but no later than five working days after discovery of the incident. Within 45 days after the event occurred, the health care facility shall submit to the department a root cause analysis and a prevention plan. If a reportable incident is disclosed to the department and the prevention plan and root cause analysis is submitted and approved by the department, the incident shall not be deemed grounds for a finding of a licensure deficiency unless within five years of the reportable incident another reportable incident occurs and is a violation of the health care facility's reportable incident prevention plan. Furthermore, the department shall promulgate rules establishing criteria for defining cases in which reportable incidents have occurred in a health care facility with a frequency or possible pattern of adverse outcomes as to necessitate departmental intervention. The department shall publish an annual report to the public on reportable incidents. The annual report shall be on its website and available as a publication upon request. The first report shall include twelve months of reported data and shall be published not more than fifteen months after the effective date of rules promulgated by the department to implement the provisions of this act. The report shall show the number and rate per patient encounter by region and by category of reportable incident and may identify reportable incidents by type of facility. Any health care facility that reports a reportable incident shall not charge for or bill any entity for all services related to the reportable incident. Provisions of this act are similar to SB 916 (2008). ADRIANE CROUSE