Health Law

Cost of a (non-HIPAA) Data Breach:

Posted on October 22, 2009
Cost of a (non-HIPAA) Data Breach: FTC fines ChoicePoint $275,000 for 2008 breach.

Business Associate Agreements:

Posted on September 26, 2009
Business Associate Agreements: The HITECH provisions of HIPAA contain some big changes for business associates, as well as some changes to business associate agreements. But the specifics aren't that well defined. What should you do? Should you amend your existing BAAs? Should you adopt a new form of BAA for new relationships, but keep the existing form to see what happens? Well, according

New York: Here's a story (subscription

Posted on September 24, 2009
New York: Here's a story (subscription required) about a NY scam similar to the Miami scam mentioned Tuesday. A lawyer and seven employees of a public hospital were arrested for running a scam where medical information of auto accident victims was taken by the hospital employees and sold to the lawyer, who used the information to file personal injury suits and get the patients unnecessary care

Social Media in Healthcare: I'll

Posted on September 24, 2009
Social Media in Healthcare: I'll be speaking again next year at Q1 Production's 2nd Annual Healthcare New Media Marketing Conference, this time in Chicago. June 14-15, 2010. I'll be discussing the legal implications of using social media in healthcare, particularly in healthcare marketing...

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More Miami Misappropriation: I

Posted on September 22, 2009
More Miami Misappropriation: I think this is a spill-over and an addition of new parties to a previous story, but a Miami cosmetician has pled guilty to buying medical records for resale to a plaintiff's lawyer, who would solicit the patients to become his clients...

Twitter: Here's a Good Question.

Posted on September 22, 2009
Twitter: Here's a Good Question. Answer: not if there's no PHI. Tweets are very short; most wouldn't be identifiable.

Off Topic: Health Reform: Interesting

Posted on September 17, 2009
Off Topic: Health Reform: Interesting article.

Cool: I'm a top 25 blog for nursing

Posted on September 14, 2009
Cool: I'm a top 25 blog for nursing assistants and CNAs.

Business Associate compliance:

Posted on September 09, 2009
Business Associate compliance: As you know, HITECH added a layer of responsibility onto business associates, so they are effectively treated as covered entities for many purposes. This means covered entities and business associates need to beef up their compliance efforts...

Physician trends and information:

Posted on September 04, 2009
Physician trends and information: This is a pretty fascinating study from the Center for Studying Health System Change on current statistics relative to US physicians. 3/4 of practicing doctors are white; 3/4 are male; about half of doctor revenue comes from Medicare and Medicaid; most doctors provide some charity care to financially strapped patients, with the charity care rates going up with

Paging the AMA: Here's how you

Posted on August 28, 2009
Paging the AMA: Here's how you do it. The AMA (American Medical Association) has been fighting the FTC over whether doctors should be subject to the Red Flags Rule, and the FTC just won't agree to the AMA's perfectly good reasons. The ABA (American Bar Association) has had the same complaint with the FTC, although the ABA has been much more aggressive, not waiting for the FTC to specifically

Self-diagnosing your network: Here's

Posted on August 25, 2009
Self-diagnosing your network: Here's a pretty good paper, from Tripwire and InformationWeek, on your network and your HIPAA responsibilities. It requires free registration, but it's worth it.

Interim Final Rule on Breach Notification:

Posted on August 21, 2009
Interim Final Rule on Breach Notification: The reviews are in. Some point out the new burdens (particularly due to the extreme limitation on what counts as "secured" PHI), some the improved features (like the harm threshold, allowing providers to not report breaches if there's little likelihood of harm).

Health Reform: Another excellent

Posted on August 19, 2009
Health Reform: Another excellent article outlining the problems with the current proposals and some principles, if not outright proposals, for reforms that might be effective.

FTC issues by the deadline, HHS

Posted on August 17, 2009
FTC issues by the deadline, HHS not so much: The Federal Trade Commission made the HITECH deadline to issue guidelines for PHR vendors and application providers to track and report data breaches. The deadline for doing so as mandated by HITECH was today...

Here's a large corporate identity

Posted on August 17, 2009
Here's a large corporate identity theft case.

Healthcare Reform: "Death panels."

Posted on August 14, 2009
Healthcare Reform: "Death panels." Much has been made of this. Sarah Palin referred to them in calling Obamacare "evil:" ?The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the costof health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, governmenthealth care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost...

OT: Beer. Forget about the watermelon

Posted on August 13, 2009
OT: Beer. Forget about the watermelon wheat beer I bottled last Sunday, this is sick (and I mean that in the good way [I think]).

Health Reform: The Whole Foods

Posted on August 12, 2009
Health Reform: The Whole Foods alternative to ObamaCare.

Healthcare Reform: This may be

Posted on August 07, 2009
Healthcare Reform: This may be the best article I've read so far. And he's right: our healthcare system isn't broken, it's amazing. It's not perfect, but it's amazing. If we changed the way we pay for it, and managed our expectations regarding what we can have and how much it really costs, we might be able to continue it.

Off topic: This is sad. He was

Posted on August 06, 2009
Off topic: This is sad. He was an unbelievable surgeon, but more so a great man. I was fortunate to call him a friend.

Miami medical record theft case:

Posted on August 06, 2009
Miami medical record theft case: I saw this on BNA this morning (subscription required): "A South Florida man was indicted on multiple criminal counts for allegedly paying a technician at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital to provide him with confidential patient information that he in turn would sell [to an unnamed personal injury lawyer], federal prosecutors announced July 31 (United States v.

Health Reform: Interesting op-ed

Posted on August 05, 2009
Health Reform: Interesting op-ed on the Wyden-Bennett Healthy Americans Act. I don't know what other baggage comes with the Act, and I don't know if it's really appropriate for the federal government to mandate that free people buy health insurance, but that may be the only alternative to allowing providers to refuse to provide care without payment...

Social Media: Somewhat off-topic

Posted on August 03, 2009
Social Media: Somewhat off-topic (since most of my social media posts relate to social media and medical record privacy, or the use of social media in healthcare advertising), but this story is a good reason to be careful when you're using any sort of social media...

OCR Takes Over Security: Apparently,

Posted on August 03, 2009
OCR Takes Over Security: Apparently, HHS will issue a Federal Register notice today that authority for administering, monitoring, and enforcing the HIPAA Security Rule will shift from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to the HHS Office of Civil Rights (OCR)...

Health Reform: this is good, t

Posted on July 31, 2009
Health Reform: this is good, too.

Off Topic: Taxing the Rich. This

Posted on July 31, 2009
Off Topic: Taxing the Rich. This isn't really all that far off topic, now that healthcare "reform" is impending. How much of the total federal income tax burden should the rich pay? What percentage of total income tax revenues should come from, say, the top 1% of taxpayers? How much from the top 5%? I think most people would agree that the answer is more than 1% and 5% respectively, but

Interesting Dallas near-HIPAA prosecution:

Posted on July 31, 2009
Interesting Dallas near-HIPAA prosecution: Computer hacker attacked hospital computers, but got caught. "Ghost Exodus" is not charged with violating HIPAA, but rather 2 counts of transmitting a malicious code. Could get 20 years in jail. Don't think he got anything out of it but not-so-cheap thrills.

Social Media: I've presented a

Posted on July 30, 2009
Social Media: I've presented a couple of speaking engagements on social media in healthcare marketing in the last couple of months. For those of you still wondering what social media is, how it works, and how it could be helpful, this is a great (if somewhat profane) slide deck.

Guest Post: Kat Sanders

Posted on July 30, 2009
Guest Post: I got a request to allow a guest post, and since I'm lazy enough to let anyone write for me, I decided to allow it. See below:HIPAA Enforcement ? When It Matters and When it Doesn?tThe HIPAA rule that protects patient privacy has been around for some time now, and it has always been in the midst of some controversy or the other...

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