This bill amends RCW 42.56.360 (the Public Records Act exemptions) to add specific categories of health care information that are confidential and not subject to public disclosure. It makes collaborative drug therapy agreements and their attachments confidential, with the contents to be specified by rule of the Pharmacy Quality Assurance Commission. The change is a modification to existing public records law that creates new confidentiality exemptions for these documents. The bill permits disclosure of a collaborative drug therapy agreement only when it served as the basis for an order or stipulation finding misconduct that resulted in disciplinary action against a license holder regulated by a disciplining authority listed in RCW 18.130.040; if disclosed under that exception, personally identifiable information about persons other than the disciplined license holder remains confidential. For purposes of that subsection, personally identifiable information is defined to include names, mailing addresses, credential numbers, email addresses, and practice site facility addresses and phone numbers. The bill also establishes a procedural protection for proprietary financial and commercial information submitted to the Department of Health for an antitrust exemption under RCW 43.72.310: the submitting entity must be notified of a records request, has ten business days to provide a written statement of continued confidentiality (which is shared with the requester), the department must continue treating the information as exempt upon receipt of that notice, and if a requester files an action to compel disclosure the submitting entity must be joined as a party. The text provided appears to be only Section 1 of the bill; no effective date, additional sections, or final legislative actions beyond referral to the State Government & Tribal Relations Committee are included.

If enacted, the bill makes specific categories of health care-related records, most notably collaborative drug therapy agreements and their attachments as defined by the Pharmacy Quality Assurance Commission, off-limits under the Public Records Act except in narrow circumstances. Collaborative drug therapy agreements can only be disclosed if they form the basis of disciplinary action by an identified disciplining authority, and even then personally identifiable information for people other than the disciplined license holder must remain confidential. Separately, proprietary financial and commercial information submitted to the Department of Health for an antitrust exemption is treated as exempt while the submitter has ten business days after notice to explain why confidentiality should continue, and the submitter must be joined as a party if a requester sues to compel disclosure. The groups most affected are the Pharmacy Quality Assurance Commission, the Department of Health, hospitals and various quality improvement, peer review and quality assurance committees, disciplining authorities, entities that submit proprietary information for antitrust exemptions, and retirement-plan holders of medical information. Those agencies and entities will likely face fewer disclosure obligations and lower risk of public release for covered records, but will have added responsibilities to withhold records, give notice to submitting entities, accept and process written confidentiality statements within the ten-business-day window, and involve submitting entities in any legal actions to compel disclosure. Key implementation details are unclear from the available text: there is no effective date shown, the commission’s rule definitions for what the agreements must contain are not included here, and the bill’s overall enactment status beyond referral to committee is not provided.