Today kicks-off one of Austin’s largest and best-known events, the South by Southwest Interactive Conference. In the spirit of Husch Blackwell’s involvement in several aspects of the conference, this post will touch on emerging health technology and pushing the limits of HIPAA.
New technology is being developed to be used in healthcare settings on a
Emerging Issues in Healthcare Law is coming to the Big Easy. The American Bar Association’s 18th annual conference is slated for New Orleans March 8-11.
Husch Blackwell is a platinum sponsor of this event featuring the most emergent topics facing the healthcare bar. As the industry faces changes and continues to grow under healthcare reform and enforcement, this conference allows attendees a perfect opportunity to stay ahead of the developments.
Continue Reading Don’t miss Emerging Issues in Healthcare Law
A California federal court handed down a decision last Friday that may further influence how healthcare entities should approach the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA) “emergency purpose” exception as applied to calls or texts related to patient health and safety. In St. Clair v. CVS Pharmacy, Inc., No. 16-CV-04911-VC, 2016 WL 7489047, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 30, 2016), the plaintiff alleged that CVS Pharmacy called him multiple times about his prescriptions after he told a customer representative that he no longer wished to be called. CVS moved to dismiss the lawsuit by claiming that all of the calls at issues fell under the emergency purpose exception contained in the statute, and therefore were not subject to the TCPA.
Continue Reading St. Clair v. CVS Pharmacy, Inc. and healthcare calls under the TCPA’s emergency purpose exception
Any agreement between two parties begins with the rosy optimism that the good times will last forever. In the world of technology licensing and development, however, we know this is rarely the case. While the Byte Back blog has previously considered data security oversight by the board of directors of the company, it is
Backing up electronic health record data may become an important aspect of complying with and mitigating risk under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) if the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR) heeds legislators’ recommendations.
Continue Reading Congress’ suggestions for ransomware treatment under HIPAA
On April 29, 2016, the Joint Commission released an update (“Update”) providing for the use of text messaging to submit orders for patient care, treatment, or services to the hospital or other health care settings for all accreditation programs. Back in 2011, the Joint Commission believed that the technology necessary to secure contents of a text message, verify the identity of the person sending the message, and retain the original message within the medical record were not readily available, and, therefore, prohibited the use of text messaging to submit orders. However, this has changed as reasonably accessible technology has been developed which mitigates the security and record retention risks the Joint Commission previously identified. In the Update, the Joint Commission said, “effective immediately, licensed independent practitioners or other practitioners in accordance with professional standards of practice, law and regulation, and policies and procedures may text orders as long as a secure text messaging platform is used and the required components of an order are included.”
Continue Reading Orders can be submitted by text – the Joint Commission update
Based on recent news stories and our experience, it appears that cybercriminals may be targeting healthcare providers with ransomware attacks. Publicly reported incidents and others of which we are aware have involved providers ranging from clinics and imaging centers to hospitals, and these entities have had to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to gain access to their medical records, billing records or other vital computer systems – often after significant interruption of operations. On March 31, 2016, the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security issued an alert about these attacks as a result of recent attacks on businesses including healthcare facilities and hospitals worldwide.
Continue Reading Caution – Vendors are not the only ones charging you to use your EHR/EMR!
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released its plans for Phase 2 of the HIPAA Audit Program (Phase 2). Whereas Phase 1 was a pilot program conducted by KPMG and intended to assess the controls and processes of 115 covered entities with respect to HIPAA compliance, in Phase
When governing information, it works well to identify and bundle rules (for legal compliance, risk, and value), identify and bundle information (by content and context), and then attach the rule bundles to the information bundles. Classification is a great means to that end, by both framing the questions and supplying the answers. With a classification scheme, we have an upstream “if-then” (if it’s this kind of information, then it has this classification), followed by a downstream “if-then” (if it’s information with this classification, then we treat it this way). A classification scheme is simply a logical paradigm, and frankly, the simpler, the better. For day-to-day efficiency, once the rules and classifications are set, we automate as much and as broadly as possible, thereby avoiding laborious individual decisions that reinvent the wheel.
Continue Reading Adding some class to Information Governance (Part 1)
Recent remarks made by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt at a healthcare conference indicated that CMS will be ending the “meaningful use” electronic health record (“EHR”) Incentive Program in 2016, five years ahead of its original final end date of 2021. Acting Administrator Slavitt did not elaborate on the specifics of what will replace meaningful use, but stated it would likely be tied to the implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (“MACRA”) and would include various streamlined quality reporting programs. MACRA emphasizes a new Merit-Based Incident Payment System and alternative payment models, and according to Acting Administrator Slavitt, this new law warrants a new streamlined regulatory approach to EHR as well.
Continue Reading CMS to rewrite the rules of EHR meaningful use