Death certificates; vital statistics; records; confidential; exceptions; effective date.

HB 1748 restricts access to Oklahoma death and birth certificates, allowing disclosure only to specific individuals or entities (such as the subject, parents, legal representatives, funeral directors, or state agencies like Medicaid and the Highway Safety Office) under defined circumstances. It requires death certificates to become publicly available 50 years after death (and birth certificates 125 years after birth) and mandates an online public index of death and birth data after 5 years (for deaths) and 20 years (for births), with fees limited to actual costs for digital files. The bill also requires the State Department of Health to share death data with agencies like the Department of Public Safety (for driver license cancellation) and the Department of Labor (for occupational injury statistics). These changes aim to balance privacy protections with necessary administrative and public health data sharing.