U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Vermont’s Prescription Drug Data Mining Ban Law Last Friday, the United States Supreme Court struck down the Vermont Prescription Confidentiality Law allowing prescriber-identifying information to be sold and disclosed by pharmacies and pharmaceutical...
Hospital Theft Leads to HIPAA Criminal Charges An Alabama woman has been slapped with criminal charges in connection with the theft of patient information from Trinity Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama, as reported by The Birmingham News. Section 1320d-6 imposes criminal penalties...
Maine Reverts Back to Opt-Out Approach for HIE In my previous post (April 26, 2011), I discussed legislation proposed by privacy advocates in Maine which would require, among other things, that patients “opt-in” before any information could be collected, accessed or disclosed through...
HHS Releases Proposed Rule for Accounting of Disclosures A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) concerning the accounting of disclosures (AOD)requirement under the HIPAA Privacy Rule was posted last Friday, May 31, 2011. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office...
OCR Will Address Almost Everything in HITECH Omnibus Rule HealthDataManagementhas quoted Susan McAndrew, deputy director of health information privacy in the Department of Health and Human Services, OCR, as saying that the final rules implementing the HITECH Act are to be released...
Class Action Sought for Charleston Area Medical Center Breach Patients affected by a West Virginia hospital breach that went undetected for several months are seeking certification as a class action as reported by Health Data Management. Five of the approximately 3,655 affected...
Maine Considers Opt-In Requirement for HIEs New legislation has been proposed by privacy advocates in Maine that would govern how patient information is shared through the statewide HIE, HealthInfoNet. LD 1337, which is entitled “The Act to Ensure Patient Privacy and Control with...
The Antitrust Headache: What ACOs, AT&T and Blue Cross have in Common So what exactly do a nation-wide health insurer and the second (potentially now first) largest U.S. wireless provider have in common? Upcoming battles over the antitrust implications of their actions and a...
Meaningful Use Missing for Behavioral/Mental Health As Meaningful Use participation kicks off this year, eligible health care providers and facilities are scrambling to make sure they will qualify for the incentive payments being shelled out by the Medicare and Medicai EHR Incentive...
CVS in the HIPAA Spotlight…Again. On March 7, CVS Caremark (CVS) hit the HIPAA spotlight again, and not in a good way. Back in 2009, CVS was the target of a joint U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Offices for Civil Rights (OCR) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC)...
FTC & Attorney General Launch Inquiry into a Nevada ACO ModernHealthcare.com is reporting that the Nevada Attorney General’s office and the Federal Trade Commission have launched an inquiry into a patient-care collaboration between Reno-based Renown Health and a local cardiology...
For Lack of a Proper “Print” Function – The Difficulties in Responding to Subpoenas to Produce the EHR Prepared by Krystyna H. Nowik, Esq. As the use of electronic health records (EHRs) and participation in health information exchanges (HIEs) expands, so does their appearance in court. ...
NJ ACO Pilot Bill Approved by Senate Budget and Appropriations See prior Legal HIE post “NJ ACOs, will they fly?” NEWS RELEASE Reprinted from: http://www.njsendems.com/release.asp?rid=3846 For Release: ImmediateThursday, March 03, 2011 Contact: Jason Butkowski(609) 292-5215 TRENTON – A...
One, Two HIPAA Penalty Punch from HHS and OCR Just as gasps from the 4.3 million dollar penalty OCR assessed against Cignet Health of Maryland started to subside, OCR delivers a whopping 1 million dollar penalty to another hospital — this time to the The General Hospital Corporation and...
Kansas Aligns State Privacy Laws with HIPAA as HIE Standard Today, the State of Kansas’ Senate committee approved (by a vote of 39-0) Senate Bill 133 to align the state’s privacy laws with HIPAA. The Kansas Health Information Exchange, Inc. (the state’s RHIO) testified before the Senate...