SB 192

This bill establishes fatality review teams under state law. Current law does not address fatality review teams, though several types of such teams currently exist in Wisconsin based on voluntary efforts primarily organized by counties, with state-level technical assistance available for certain types of teams.

Under the bill, a fatality review team is defined as a multidisciplinary and multiagency team reviewing one or more types of death among children or adults and developing recommendations to prevent future deaths of similar circumstances. The bill generally governs a team’s responsibilities, ability to access certain records, confidentiality requirements, and disclosure of information.

Duties and authority of the Department of Health Services

Under the bill, the Department of Health Services must establish a fatality review program comprised of local fatality review teams established at the option of a municipality, a county, a local health department, or a tribal health department, or a combination of these entities. The bill also authorizes, but does not require, DHS to create state fatality review teams.

The bill requires DHS to perform various duties, in consultation with other state agencies as appropriate, such as: 1) facilitate local team development; 2) identify training needs and make available training resources; 3) provide technical assistance and support; 4) in the absence of a local team or upon request, assign review of deaths to a state fatality review team, if established; 5) educate the public on causes and recommendations for prevention of reviewable deaths; and 6) provide information to the legislature, state agencies, and local communities on the need for modifications to law, policy, or practice. The bill allows DHS to contract with an entity to perform any of its duties under the bill.

Under the bill, DHS or its contracted entity must create and make available to fatality review teams a confidentiality agreement for use by team members to ensure confidentiality consistent with the bill’s provisions. The bill requires DHS to promulgate administrative rules to develop and implement a standardized form for review of suicide deaths, and allows DHS to promulgate rules to develop and implement standardized forms for other types of reviewable deaths. The bill further grants general rule-making authority to DHS to implement the bill’s provisions.

Fatality review teams

The bill contains general provisions governing any type of fatality review team. The bill identifies examples of the types of deaths that may constitute a reviewable death, including overdose, suicide, maternal death occurring during or within a year of a pregnancy, or any unexpected or unintentional death of a child, among others. The bill also provides a non-exhaustive list of potential team members.

Under the bill, a fatality review team has the purpose of gathering information about reviewable deaths to examine risk factors and understand how deaths may be prevented, through identifying recommendations for cross-sector, system-level policy and practice changes, and promoting cooperation and coordination among the agencies involved in understanding causes of reviewable deaths or in providing services to surviving family members.

If established, each fatality review team must: 1) establish and implement team protocols; 2) collect and maintain data; 3) create strategies and track implementation of prevention recommendations; and 4) evaluate the team’s process, interagency collaboration, and implementation of recommendations. The bill requires teams to assign, as appropriate for a specific review, a team member to complete any standardized form developed by DHS, and to enter data regarding each reviewable death into any secure database designated by DHS or its contracted entity.

Record access and confidentiality

The bill authorizes a fatality review team to access records from a variety of sources, such as certain state agencies, law enforcement, medical examiners and coroners, health care providers, social or human service agencies, schools, and the prescription drug monitoring program, among others, subject to certain restrictions under the bill and current law.

Information and records provided to or created by a fatality review team are confidential, subject to limited exceptions provided under the bill, and are not subject to Wisconsin’s public records laws. The bill requires team members, and other individuals invited to attend a team meeting, to sign a confidentiality agreement before participating in or attending a fatality review team meeting. The bill prohibits team members, persons in attendance at team meetings, and others providing records to teams from testifying in any civil or criminal action as to the information specifically obtained through participation in the team’s meeting

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The bill authorizes disclosure of information if such disclosure serves a team’s purpose and certain other conditions are met, such as the information does not allow for identification of individuals and does not contain conclusory information attributing fault. The bill further specifies that a team’s information and records are not subject to discovery or subpoena, or admissible as evidence, in a civil or criminal action, unless obtained independently from a team’s review. The bill also provides that a person participating in a fatality review team is immune from civil or criminal liability for any good faith act or omission in connection with providing information or recommendations.

The bill exempts fatality review team meetings from Wisconsin’s open meetings law. The bill allows for public meetings to share summary findings and recommendations, but limits the types of information that may be disclosed in public meetings.