Characteristics of Laws Requiring Physicians to Report Patient Information for Public Health Surveillance: Notable Patterns from a Nevada Case Study

Laws across the globe require healthcare providers to disclose patient health information to public health entities for surveillance and intervention purposes. Physicians play a unique role in such mandatory reporting regimes. However, research reveals consistent under-reporting and points to limited knowledge of mandates, perceived burdens of reporting, misaligned incentives and penalties, and a lack of streamlined processes as significant reporting barriers. These barriers suggest that how legal mandates are structured may impact compliance; yet little research systematically examines their characteristics. Law-based reporting requirements differ across jurisdictions. Thus, we conducted a case study in the U.S. State of Nevada to characterize its physician mandatory reporting laws using legal mapping methodology. Nevada is a useful case study because it has few local jurisdictions and its legislature meets biennially. First, we searched key terms to find relevant state mandates and screened them using inclusion criteria. We then scanned near included provisions for additional requirements and incorporated requirements known a priori. We also searched relevant local regulations. Next, we analyzed all included provisions. Our findings indicate wide, intra-jurisdictional variation in reporting requirements across conditions. Variability extends to physician discretion, information reported, timing, recipient agencies, reporting processes, and implications of non-compliance. Local-level variation adds further complexity. Some relevant state requirements apply only to physicians and nearly one-third were absent from our searches. Our findings support exploring the hypothesis that reporting requirements’ characteristics may impact compliance and call for empirically testing such relationships to enhance compliance and public health surveillance and intervention efforts.