Title 44, Health

The physician shall make the aforesaid certificate on a form supplied by the Department of Health and Environmental Control, whose duty it shall be to provide such forms upon request of the applicant.

(A) No superintendent of an institution of learning, no school board or principal of a school, and no owner or operator of a public or private childcare facility as defined in Section 63-13-20 may admit as a pupil or enroll or retain a child or person who cannot produce satisfact…

(A)(1) Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, the Department of Health and Environmental Control may offer the cervical cancer vaccination series for adolescent students. Adolescent students include children enrolling in the seventh grade in any school, public, private, or hom…

Any person who violates the provisions of Section 44-29-180 is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, may be fined not more than two hundred dollars or imprisoned for not more than thirty days.

(A) A student sent home from school for having pediculosis (head lice) only may return to school upon presentation of evidence of treatment and upon a physical screening conducted by the school nurse or other person designated by the principal indicating an absence of pediculosis…

Prior to transportation of human remains known to be infected by any dangerous, contagious, or infectious disease into, through, or out of this State or any city, town, or county within this State, the hospital, health or medical clinic, physician, medical facility, person, or ot…

Any board of education, school trustees, or other body having control of a school, on account of the prevalence of any contagious or infectious diseases or to prevent the spread of disease, may prohibit or limit the attendance of any employee or student at any school or school-re…

(A) If the Board of the Department of Health and Environmental Control or the Director of the Department of Health and Environmental Control approves in writing a mass immunization project to be administered in any part of this State in cooperation with an official or volunteer m…

(A) While working with a person or a person's blood or body fluids, if a health care worker or emergency response employee is involved in an incident resulting in possible exposure to bloodborne diseases, and a health care professional based on reasonable medical judgment has cau…

A person, upon whom an invasive, exposure-prone procedure, as defined by the Department of Health and Environmental Control, is scheduled to be performed, is encouraged to know his HIV antibody, HBsAG, and HBeAg status and disclose the status to the health care professionals rend…

Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter or a regulation promulgated under this chapter, a person who collects and anonymously submits a sample of the person's own body fluid or tissue for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection testing is not required to report a…

Whenever any animal or poultry shall die from any natural or other cause, except from being slaughtered or killed for the use of man, or the dead body thereof be found upon the premises of any person, be he the owner or tenant thereof, the owner of such dead animal or poultry, or…

(A) The Department of Health and Environmental Control shall have general direction and supervision of vaccination, screening, and immunization in this State. The Department of Health and Environmental Control has the authority to promulgate regulations concerning vaccination, sc…

Any person who shall fail, neglect or refuse to comply with any regulation of the Department of Health and Environmental Control relating to vaccination, screening or immunization shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not more than one hundred…

Sexually transmitted diseases which are included in the annual Department of Health and Environmental Control List of Reportable Diseases are declared to be contagious, infectious, communicable, and dangerous to the public health. Sexually transmitted diseases include all venerea…

Any physician or other person who makes a diagnosis of or treats a case of a sexually transmitted disease and any superintendent or manager of a hospital, dispensary, health care related facility, or charitable or penal institution in which there is a case of a sexually transmitt…

Any laboratory performing a positive laboratory test for a sexually transmitted disease shall make a report of the case or positive laboratory test for a sexually transmitted disease to the Department of Health and Environmental Control in the form and manner as the department di…

State, district, county, and municipal health officers, in their respective jurisdictions, when in their judgment it is necessary to protect the public health, shall make examination of persons infected or suspected of being infected with a sexually transmitted disease, require p…

This article may be cited as the "South Carolina Health Care Professional Compliance Act".

As used in this article: (1) "CDC" means the Centers for Disease Control of the Public Health Service. (2) "CDC recommendations" means the July 12, 1991, CDC document (MMWR, Volume 40, No. RR-8) entitled "Recommendations for Preventing Transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus…

(A) The department is authorized to ensure and oversee the implementation of Public Law 102-141, Section 633, and applicable CDC recommendations and any appropriate supplements and revisions to the CDC recommendations which apply to health care professionals. (B) The department s…

If a health care provider, licensed pursuant to the laws of this State, informs his or her patient in writing, which may include use of an electronic medical record device, before treatment that the treatment to be rendered by the health care provider will be provided free of cha…

(A) By October 1, 1992, each licensing board shall adopt the CDC recommendations and shall communicate with its respective health care professionals by written notice of their adoption. This written notice must include information that noncompliance may subject the licensee to di…

No member of an expert review panel or licensing board and no person or organization providing consultation to an expert review panel or licensing board may be subject to civil or criminal liability for actions or omissions made during investigations or hearings or made in ruling…

(A) An expert review panel is considered a professional committee pursuant to Chapter 71, Title 40, "Liability of Members of Professional Committees". Proceedings, records, and information acquired or produced by the panel are confidential pursuant to Section 40-71-20, except tha…

A health care professional who violates a recommendation of the expert review panel as set forth in Section 44-30-40 and related regulations is subject to disciplinary action by the appropriate licensing board. Nothing in this article prohibits the department from taking any acti…

An educational institution providing basic training programs for health care professionals in preparation for licensure in the State shall certify annually to the department that it provides curricula for infection control, universal precautions, and sterilization and disinfectio…

The department and each licensing board shall promulgate regulations necessary to accomplish the purposes set forth in this article and to comply with public law no later than October 1, 1992. All orders for medication dispensed or treatment provided in a hospital shall be authen…

Every attending physician and chief administrative officer having charge of any hospital, clinic, dispensary or other similar private or public institution in the State shall make a report in writing, on a form to be furnished by the Department of Health and Environmental Control…

(A) The General Assembly finds that: (1) Pulmonary tuberculosis is a life-threatening airborne disease. Tuberculosis has reemerged as an epidemic disease nationally. The number and types of cases in South Carolina each year, including drug-resistant tuberculosis, demonstrate that…

(A) If the Department of Health and Environmental Control determines that the public health or the health of any individual is endangered by a case of tuberculosis, or a suspected case of tuberculosis, the commissioner, or his or her designee, may issue an emergency order he or s…

(A) When it is brought to the attention of a Department of Health and Environmental Control health officer that a person with active tuberculosis is unable or unwilling to conduct himself so as not to expose others to danger, the department shall issue an emergency order pursuant…

If the judge of probate, after notice and hearing, is satisfied that the petition is well founded, the judge may commit the person to a facility designated by the department, and the commitment continues until the department notifies the probate judge that the person is no longer…

A person committed to a facility under the terms of this article has the right to appeal to a court having jurisdiction for review of the evidence under which the person was committed. The order of commitment must not be stayed pending appeal.

If a person committed to a facility pursuant to this article leaves without permission or, in the opinion of the department, endangers the public, staff, or other patients, the department is empowered to isolate and forceably detain the person if necessary until such time as the …

A person committed under the provisions of this article who is detained solely for treatment or isolation in a facility designated by the department may not be committed to a local detention facility.

If a person lawfully detained or committed pursuant to this article to a facility leaves the facility without permission of the attending physician, the department shall report this information to the judge of probate of the county from which the patient was committed, and the ju…

A person must not be required to take compulsory treatment under the provisions of this article until two physicians licensed to practice in this State certify that the person sought to be confined for treatment has tuberculosis in a contagious state and constitutes a danger to t…

No provision of this article may be construed as interfering with the ordinary admission of tuberculosis patients to a facility through channels that have customarily been followed in the past, and this article applies only to cases that have proved to be beyond ordinary, reasona…

(1) All bacteriological and pathological laboratories rendering diagnostic service shall report to the Department of Health and Environmental Control, within twenty-four hours after diagnosis, the full name and other available data relating to the person whose sputa, gastric cont…

The department may promulgate regulations to carry out the purposes and provisions of this chapter.

Authorized personnel of the Department of Health and Environmental Control may inspect all medical records of all public and private institutions and clinics where tuberculosis patients are treated, and shall provide consultation services to officers of State educational, correct…

The county supervisors and governing bodies of the respective counties shall provide in the jails or places of confinement where prisoners are committed for keeping or sentenced to a term of imprisonment separate cells, rooms or places in which shall be confined all prisoners who…

The county supervisor or sheriff of any county, when a prisoner or inmate is placed in his custody who the official has reason to suspect is suffering with tuberculosis, shall have such prisoner or inmate examined by a physician and if such prisoner or inmate shall be pronounced …

The jailer, keeper or warden of every place of confinement designated in this article shall have all prisoners and inmates who are suspected to be suffering with tuberculosis examined within five days after they have been committed.

Superintendents and boards of directors of all State penal and charitable institutions shall provide separate places of confinement for all prisoners and inmates who have been pronounced by the physician in charge as tuberculous persons.