For the past several weeks, Upper Merion Area Spotlight has been working through Pennsylvania’s roughly 500-page proposal to rewrite the regulations governing communicable and noncommunicable diseases.

The plan was for Part 4 to examine proposed changes involving medical records and immunization reporting.

Instead, the proposal itself has now been pulled.

In a letter dated Sept. 25, Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Debra Bogen notified state Rep. Kathy Rapp, Republican chair of the House Health Committee, that the Department of Health is withdrawing Proposed Rulemaking #10-242 from consideration by the Independent Regulatory Review Commission.

The letter is brief.

It says the Department intends to make “further revisions to the proposed rulemaking” and resubmit it as a new proposed rulemaking at a future date.

That means the 502-page proposal we have spent the past three installments examining will not move forward in its current form.

It does not mean the effort to rewrite Pennsylvania’s disease-control regulations is over.

The Department of Health submitted the proposed regulations to IRRC on June 4. They were published Aug. 8, beginning a public-comment period that ended Sept. 21.

The proposal represented a comprehensive rewrite of 28 Pa. Code Chapter 27, the regulations governing Pennsylvania’s response to communicable and noncommunicable diseases.

DOH said the existing regulations needed modernization. The current framework dates largely to 2001, with narrower changes made since then.

The proposal covered hundreds of pages and touched on disease reporting, investigations, isolation and quarantine, contact tracing, schools, medical records, immunization reporting and the broader disease-control authority available to state and local health officials. IRRC

The state was asking residents for their input on a highly technical proposal that ran more than 500 pages.

So rather than summarize the entire package in one article, we decided to break it down.

In Part 1, we examined a proposed change to Pennsylvania’s broader disease-control authority.

Among other things, the Department proposed adding the words “prevention, containment or mitigation” to the purposes for which health officials could employ disease-control measures.

The Department itself connected that amendment to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s 2021 decision involving the statewide school masking order.

In Part 2, we examined disease-investigation authority, including provisions allowing public-health officials to enter homes, schools, health care facilities and other locations during certain investigations.

One of the important distinctions we found was that some version of that authority already exists under current Pennsylvania regulations. The proposal would have rewritten, reorganized and in some instances broadened or clarified it.

In Part 3, we looked at proposed requirements specifically involving schools.

Those provisions would have required schools to provide health officials reasonable and timely access to people for contact tracing and partner services, including during the school day or at school functions. The proposal also addressed private conversations with students and existing Pennsylvania laws that allow minors to consent to certain disease-related medical services.

Our fourth installment was going to examine additional proposed changes involving medical records and immunization reporting.

For now, those provisions are off the table along with the rest of Regulation #10-242.

The proposal generated significant public and legislative interest.

IRRC currently displays a notice saying it received a large volume of emails and comments concerning recently proposed regulations and that staff are continuing to process and post those submissions. IRRC

Lawmakers also weighed in from different perspectives.

On Sept. 21, 85 Republican members of the Pennsylvania House submitted comments raising concerns about privacy, parental rights and the scope of the Department’s proposed authority and called for the regulation to be withdrawn. Reprapp

House Health Committee Democratic Chair Dan Frankel also submitted comments. He expressed support for portions of the proposal, including stronger vaccine-reporting requirements and public-health response tools, while calling for changes in other areas, including clearer guidance governing interactions between health officials and students of different ages. Pennsylvania House Democrats

IRRC’s docket also lists comments from 21 state senators, Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward and numerous individual legislators.

We don't know.

The timing is notable: the public-comment period closed Sept. 21, and Secretary Bogen’s withdrawal letter is dated Sept. 25.

But the letter does not say why the Department decided to withdraw the proposal.

It does not attribute the decision to opposition from legislators, public comments, legal concerns or any particular provision.

It says only that DOH intends to make further revisions.

Until the Department provides additional explanation, anything more would be speculation.

As of our check on Sept. 25, IRRC’s public docket still lists Regulation #10-242 as “Proposed.”

It also currently says there have been no IRRC actions on the regulation and does not yet display the Sept. 25 withdrawal letter among its related documents. IRRC

That appears to be an administrative lag between the Department’s withdrawal notice and the public docket being updated.

The signed letter from Secretary Bogen, however, states clearly that DOH is withdrawing the proposal from IRRC consideration.

This may be the most important part.

DOH did not say it is abandoning the rewrite.

The Department says it intends to revise the proposal and resubmit it as a new proposed rulemaking at a future date.

That means Pennsylvania residents may eventually get another opportunity to review and comment on a revised version.

And when that happens, we will have something particularly useful to compare:

What did the original proposal say? What did DOH change? What stayed the same?

Those differences could tell residents a great deal about which portions of Regulation #10-242 the Department decided needed another look.

This regulatory debate has also unfolded during one of Pennsylvania’s most significant measles outbreaks in years.

That was one reason we began examining the proposal in the first place.

The regulations govern the authority health officials use during actual communicable-disease outbreaks, making the ongoing measles response a real-world example of why questions about investigations, contact tracing, schools, disease-control measures and agency discretion matter.

The outbreak did not create Regulation #10-242, and the Department has not said it caused the proposal to be withdrawn.

But it has provided a timely example of the situations these rules are designed to govern.

For now.

But probably not permanently.

The original Regulation #10-242 is being withdrawn.

If and when Pennsylvania submits its replacement, Upper Merion Area Spotlight will return to it.

And this time we'll have something we didn't have when this series started:

the original 502-page proposal to compare it against.

That may ultimately make the next round even more informative.

For now, Pennsylvania residents who took the time to read, comment or otherwise participate in the regulatory process have an answer about what happens to this version of the proposal:

It will not move forward as written.

The next question is what the Department of Health changes before bringing it back.

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Thank you for reading,

Corey