§ 35-1-240 — Powers and duties

(a) Subject to subsection (c) of this section, the
department of health, through the state health officer, or under
his direction and supervision, through the other employees of
the department, shall have and exercise the following powers and
duties:
(i) To exercise in Wyoming, all the rights and powers
and perform all duties hereunder;
(ii) To investigate and control the causes of
epidemic, endemic, communicable, occupational and other diseases
and afflictions, and physical disabilities resulting therefrom,
affecting the public health;
(iii) To establish, maintain and enforce isolation
and quarantine, and in pursuance thereof, and for such purpose
only, to exercise such physical control over property and over
the persons of the people within this state as the state health
officer may find necessary for the protection of the public
health;
(iv) To close theaters, schools and other public
places, and to forbid gatherings of people when necessary to
protect the public health;
(v) To abate nuisances when necessary for the
protection of the public health;
(vi) To enforce such sanitary standards for the
protection of public health as to the quality of water supplied
to the public and as to the quality of the effluent of sewerage
systems and trade wastes discharged upon the land or into the
surface or ground waters of the state, as are or may be
established by law, and to advise with municipalities,
utilities, institutions, organizations and individuals,
concerning the methods or processes believed by him best suited
to provide the protection or purification of water and the
treatment of sewage and trade wastes to meet such minimum
standards;
(vii) To collect, compile, and tabulate reports of
marriages, divorces and annulments, births, deaths and
morbidity, and to require any person having information with
regard to the same to make such reports;
(viii) To regulate the disposal, transportation,
interment and disinterment of the dead;
(ix) To establish, maintain and approve chemical,
bacteriological and biological laboratories and to conduct or
require such laboratory investigations and examinations as it
may deem necessary or proper for the protection of the public
health;
(x) To make, approve, and require standard diagnostic
tests and to prepare, distribute and require the completion of
forms of certificates with respect thereto;
(xi) To purchase and to distribute to licensed
physicians, with or without charge, as the department may
determine, or to administer such vaccines, serums, toxoids and
other approved biological or therapeutic products as may be
necessary for the protection of the public health;
(xii) To exercise sanitary control over the use of
water employed in the irrigation of vegetables or other edible
crops intended for human consumption, and to exercise sanitary
control over the use of fertilizer derived from excreta of human
beings or from the sludge of sewage disposal plants. The state
health officer shall have authority to impound any and all
vegetables and other edible crops and meat and animal products
intended for human consumption which have been grown or produced
in violation of the orders, rules and regulations of the
department, and upon five (5) days notice and after affording
reasonable opportunity for a hearing, to the interested parties
before the state health officer or his designee, to condemn and
destroy the same if it deems such necessary for the protection
of the public health;
(xiii) To certify, inspect and exercise sanitary
control over hospitals, sanitoriums, convalescent homes,
maternity homes, asylums, and other similar institutions;
(xiv) To establish standards and make sanitary,
sewerage and health inspections for charitable, penal and other
state and county institutions;
(xv) To enforce current sanitary standards, or those
that may be established by law, for the operation and
maintenance of lodging houses, hotels, public conveyances and
stations, schools, factories, workshops, industrial and labor
camps, recreational resorts and camps, and other buildings,
centers and places used for public gatherings;
(xvi) To establish and enforce sanitary standards for
the operation of toilet facilities in all garages, filling
stations and other places of business which maintain such
facilities for the convenience of their patrons;
(xvii) To disseminate public health information;
(xviii) To exercise all the rights and powers and
perform all the duties vested in or imposed by law upon the
state department of health, its officers and employees, as
constituted before this act, becomes effective; to hold
hearings, administer oaths, subpoena witnesses and take
testimony in all matters relating to the exercise and
performances of the powers and duties vested in or imposed upon
the department;
(xix) To advise the director of the department about
public health issues, programs and policies for the state;
(xx) To operate a public health nursing program which
may include, but is not limited to, provision of immunizations,
evaluation of the need of individuals for nursing home admission
or services and the operation of an infant public health nurse
home visitation subprogram. The public health nursing program
may, where and to the extent appropriate, be administered
through or in conjunction with county, municipal or district
health departments;
(xxi) During a public health emergency as defined by
W.S. 35-4-115(a)(i), the state health officer may prescribe
pharmaceutical or therapeutic interventions en masse as
necessary to protect the public health;
(xxii) Administer the Wyoming physician recruitment
grant program provided in W.S. 35-1-1101;
(xxiii) Develop initiatives and provide information
to the public regarding palliative care as provided in W.S. 35-
1-1203.
(b) In carrying out duties prescribed under paragraphs
(a)(ii) and (vii) of this section, the department shall:
(i) Develop and require the uniform registration and
reporting of medical information by hospitals, physicians and
other health care providers as necessary to establish the
Wyoming central tumor registry in accordance with the American
college of surgeons guidelines;
(ii) By rule and regulation establish registration
fees for hospitals, physicians or other health care providers
required to register medical information with the registry under
paragraph (b)(i) of this section in an amount to ensure that, to
the extent practicable, the total revenue generated from the
fees collected approximates but does not exceed the direct and
indirect costs of administering and operating the registry. Fees
collected under this paragraph shall be deposited in the general
fund.
(c) Any order issued under this section that restricts
individuals' movements or their ability to engage in any
activity, that applies to individuals not under an isolation or
quarantine order and that is designed to prevent or limit the
transmission of a contagious or possibly contagious disease
shall be effective for a period of not more than ten (10) days.
Subsequent orders for the same or substantially same purpose
shall only be issued by the governor, with consultation provided
by the state health officer and shall be in effect for not more
than sixty (60) days.