SANE hospitals (Department of Health)

Dear Vanessa Nason:

We received your public records request on October 18, 2017, for the following records: a list of all facilities that provide sexual assault forensic exams administered by a certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE).

The Department of Health has no records responsive to this request. Since there were no identified responsive records, this request is considered closed.

In searching for records that could be responsive to your request, we identified the locations where the records would most likely reside within DOH and performed the following steps:

* Contacted our list specialist and was told that there was no way to search our centralized database for that information,
* At the suggestion of our list specialist we contacted our hospital and facilities licensing division and was told that they do not track that data nor do we have a field for it in the centralized database,
* Contacted our nursing licensing division and was told that we do not track that data for individuals either.

In searching for more information on the Department of Health website, I came across a study done by the Washington State Department of Commerce, published December 2016, on the topic of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Availability, Adequacy, Costs, and Training. Perhaps it may be useful for your research? It is located here (pdf, 62 pages): http://www.commerce.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Commerce-SANE-2016-Final.pdf

In the study linked above, under the strategy chapter, Strategy 6 (Regulatory subheading), “Washington State does not have oversight responsibilities of SANEs, and SANE data is inconsistently collected. To unify both of these gaps with a unity of state government charged with the collection and dissemination of SANE data would increase the understanding of SANE service availability, and pinpoint with greater accuracy areas of the state that are experiecing sexual assault. In contract, the challenges in organizing a unit of state government to collect data on this scale would require a moderate amount of time to create systems, policies, and engage stakeholders that receive data. A comparable program is the Washington State Department of Health’s (DOH) aforementioned injury data tables that track the number of injuries by category. More information is needed before a recommendation can be made.”

Under RCW 42.56.520 you may appeal this decision via a request for review by the Department of Health’s Public Records Officer. The request must be submitted in writing.

Mailing Address: Email Address:

Public Records Officer PRRappeals@doh.wa.gov<mailto:PRRappeals@doh.wa.gov>
Washington State Department of Health
P.O. Box 47890
Olympia, WA 98504-7890

Sincerely,

Richard Stringfellow
Forms and Records Analyst 3
Health Systems Quality Assurance (HSQA)
HSQA/Public Disclosure Unit
PO Box 47865
Olympia, WA 98504-7865
Phone: (360) 236-4832 Fax: (360) 586-2171
Email: richard.stringfellow@doh.wa.gov<mailto:richard.stringfellow@doh.wa.gov>

Public Health – Always Working for a Safer and Healthier Washington