Bill > A03375

This bill amends the Public Health Law in New York to establish protocols for healthcare facilities providing birthing and newborn care services to follow when a stillbirth occurs. The key provisions include: (1) requiring the Commissioner of Health to develop comprehensive policies and procedures for handling stillbirths, (2) mandating that healthcare facilities adhere to these policies as a condition of licensure, (3) establishing a fetal death evaluation protocol to collect data on stillbirths, (4) creating a database to store this data and make it available to the public, and (5) requiring the Commissioner to evaluate the data to identify causes of and ways to prevent stillbirths. The bill also requires the Commissioner to report on the findings of this evaluation within five years.