5. The chapter has been renamed to acknowledge that notifiable conditions include communicable, environmental and occupational diseases. It provides definitions of "public health threat" and "notifiable disease or condition" to allow for reporting related to toxins or other agents that could have serious implications either in the severity of the impact on individuals or potential for impact on a large number of people.

6. It eliminates the Medical Legal Advisory Panel.

7. It clarifies that protected health information may be disclosed to health providers in the event of an actual or threatened outbreak or epidemic as declared by the Director of the Bureau of Health.

8. It clarifies that, under the Maine Medical Laboratory Act, licensed and unlicensed laboratories have public health reporting requirements. This provision requires all laboratories that receive, forward or analyze specimens of materials from the human body or referred cultures of specimens from the human body and report the results to health care providers who use the data for purposes of patient care to comply with the law regarding control and reporting of notifiable diseases and conditions. This provision allows compliance with these requirements to be considered when laboratories are evaluated and applications for licenses or renewals are considered.

9. It provides employment protection in an extreme public health emergency by protecting from unfavorable employment actions an employee who has been quarantined or isolated or who provides care to someone who has been isolated or quarantined during an extreme public health emergency. The proposal is modeled after legislation that was passed in Toronto as a result of SARS and draws from several Maine laws providing employment protection to those who are victims of abuse, on family medical leave or serving in the military.