Delaware Code Title 16 Sec. 221 – Purpose
The intent of the General Assembly is to establish and maintain an autism surveillance system and registry for the State.
Terms Used In Delaware Code Title 16 Sec. 221
- Autism: means any structural or biochemical abnormality, regardless of cause, diagnosed at any time before or after birth, that requires medical or surgical intervention or that interferes with normal growth or development. See Delaware Code Title 16 Sec. 222
- Department: means the Department of Health and Social Services. See Delaware Code Title 16 Sec. 222
- Registry: means a central data bank containing collected, classified, coded and stored data relating to autism in children. See Delaware Code Title 16 Sec. 222
- State: means the State of Delaware; and when applied to different parts of the United States, it includes the District of Columbia and the several territories and possessions of the United States. See Delaware Code Title 1 Sec. 302
- Surveillance: means the process of identifying and investigating autism in children. See Delaware Code Title 16 Sec. 222
Responsibility for establishing and maintaining the system and registry is delegated to the Department of Health and Social Services, along with the authority to exercise certain powers to implement the system and registry. To ensure an accurate and continuing source of data concerning autism, the General Assembly by this subchapter requires certain health-care practitioners and all hospitals and clinical laboratories to make available to the Department of Health and Social services information contained in the medical records of patients who have a suspected or confirmed autism diagnosis. All confirmed autism shall be classified and coded using the medically recognized system of International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM), as well as the 6-digit modified British Pediatric Association system (BPA/ICD-9), and all subsequent revisions to these publications which are used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is intended that the product of these efforts will be a central data bank of accurate, precise and current information regarding all autism diagnosed or treated, or both, in this State.