Enforcement of Electronic Health Records
Technology in Healthcare
Tax Developments Affecting Health Care Organizations and Investor-Owned Hospital Companies
Background - On July 1, an amendment to the Florida Electronic Health Records Exchange Act (the Act) will go into effect. The Act focuses on information safety and sets forth stringent requirements that prohibit health...more
Privacy revisions under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) may be on the horizon, with some potential changes that could benefit both patients and the healthcare industry. Other changes, if...more
Dive into a broad spectrum of topics affecting healthcare organizations. Explore the latest laws, regulations, and developments to help you effectively manage your organization’s privacy compliance program. Our Academies are...more
A tricky issue for mobile health app developers since the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released its first “Health App Use Scenarios & HIPAA” guidance back in 2016 has been deciphering whether the developer is a business...more
Dr. Steven A. Porter, M.D., P.C. (Dr. Porter’s Practice) and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) entered into a $100,000 no-fault settlement agreement and two year...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) on March 9, 2020, released separate but related final rules addressing interoperability,...more
Digital health companies are producing increasingly innovative products at a rapidly accelerating pace, fueled in large part by the expansive healthcare data ecosystem and the data strategies for harnessing the power of that...more
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become part of our daily lives, from greeting us in the morning through smart home devices, creating shopping lists, playing music, setting timers, and alerting us of a traffic jam on our...more
Report on Patient Privacy 20, no. 2 (February 2020) - The year is still young, but the federal government has announced a potentially far-reaching privacy effort that should catch HIPAA compliance officers’ attention. And...more
On January 23, 2020, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia declared sections of the 2013 Omnibus Rule unlawful. The Court found that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) impermissibly...more
On January 28, 2020, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a notice (the OCR Notice) regarding individuals’ right of access to health records in response to a January 23, 2020...more
Google Health’s Partnerships Raise Privacy Concerns - Recently, Google has been at the center of privacy concerns due to its health- sharing collaborations with the University of Chicago Medical Center (the Medical Center)...more
On October 17, 2019, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) published two proposed rules (one by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and one by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)) that, if...more
LitLand is a monthly feature that reviews developments in litigation as they relate to privacy matters and highlight any past, current, and future cases about which you should know....more
On April 18, 2019, the Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued five new FAQs addressing the applicability of HIPAA to the use of software applications (apps) by individuals to receive health...more
The federal Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights, which enforces HIPAA, maintains a website with very helpful "frequently asked questions" (FAQs) regarding the HIPAA Privacy Rule and Security Rule....more
Smart speakers are voice-activated, internet-connected devices with an integrated virtual assistant that can answer questions, follow instructions and control other smart devices....more
A mind-boggling example of administrative overreach, i.e. HHS’s issuance of overreaching regulations (in 2013) and sub-regulatory Guidance (in 2016), which impose a $22 billion lifetime regulatory cost ($1.52 billion per year...more
Management of electronic health records (EHR) is a complicated yet necessary task in the modern practice of medicine. To reduce the administrative burden of managing EHR records, many physicians and other healthcare...more
Text messaging is a convenient way for busy doctors to communicate, but for years, the question has remained: are doctors allowed to convey sensitive health information with other members of their provider team over SMS? The...more
Under the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary is mandated to have promulgated regulations by Dec. 13, 2017 that, among other requirements, prohibit “information blocking” as a...more
A recently unsealed qui tam action further demonstrates the growing focus on the propriety of incentive payments made under Medicare and Medicaid's Electronic Health Records (EHR) Incentive Programs. Health care providers...more
Congress established the Health Care Industry Cybersecurity Task Force (the “Task Force”) in the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 (the “Act”) to address the challenges the health care industry faces when securing and protecting...more
There are inherent risks in any vendor relationship. In the healthcare industry, with myriad regulatory pitfalls, the stakes can be even higher. Several customers of the cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) software...more