This bill revises various provisions of the Tennessee Prescription Safety Act of 2016, as follows: (1) This bill decreases from seven to six the number of controlled substance database committee members required for a quorum (the committee has 11 members); (2) Generally under present law, information sent to, contained in, and reported from the controlled substance database is confidential and not subject to the public records laws or subpoena. Present law establishes in detail how and to whom such information may be made available. Under present law, information may be provided to the state chief medical examiner, deputy state chief medical examiner, or county medical examiner when acting in an official capacity. This bill adds assistant state medical examiner, deputy county medical examiner, and forensic pathologist under the control or direction of the chief medical examiner or a county medical examiner to the list of persons to whom the database information may be made available; (3) Under present law, authorized committee, board, or department personnel and any designee appointed by the committee engaged in analysis of controlled substance prescription information as part of the assigned duties and responsibilities of their employment may publish, or otherwise make available to healthcare practitioners and to the general public, "aggregate unidentifiable" personal data contained in or derived from the database for the purpose of educational outreach. This bill revises this provision to provide for the availability of "deidentified" personal data instead of "aggregate unidentifiable personal information." This bill makes similar revisions in other related provisions; and (4) Present law authorizes the commissioner of health to enter into agreements with the federal center for disease control and prevention (CDC), other states, or other entities acting on behalf of a state for the purposes of sharing and dissemination of data and information in the database. Present law limits the use of such information to analysis of controlled substance prescriptions for public health research by other state or federal entities charged with protecting the public health, or interstate data sharing. This bill removes the reference to "interstate" in regard to the authorized data sharing.

Statutes affected:
Introduced: 47-50-119, 47-50-121(a), 47-50-121