HIPAA and Third-Party Contracts: What You Need to Know!

If you are a healthcare practitioner who falls under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as a covered entity, you must follow HIPAA rules and regulations when you contract with an outside third party vendor to help you with your practice. If any business associate has potential access to your patients’ protected health information (PHI), they need to sign a business associate agreement (BAA) to ensure confidentiality and follow HIPAA regulations.

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How Does a Practitioner Remove a Patient from Their Practice Legally?

There are many reasons for dismissing a patient from your practice. This may involve a patient that has been with you for many years or not that long, but someone who you feel is disruptive; or there has been a breakdown in communication; or it is just not in the best interest of either party for them to remain in your practice.

A Court Case All Medical Practitioners Should Know About

Practitioners and their support staff have become very familiar with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) over the years, but as a recent ruling shows, the law continues to evolve.

What Can Providers Charge for Copies of Medical Records?

A recent U.S. Court of Appeals case—Carter v. Healthport Technologies, LLC—has established that healthcare practitioners and businesses need to be very careful on what they charge for providing copies of medical records to patients.

Whether they are copying the medical records directly for the patients, or they’re sending them to patients’ attorneys or other representatives, they should not charge more than 75 cents per page, pursuant to the New York Public Health law. If they do charge more than 75 cents, they may be sued for profiting from this activity.

Can Medical Practitioners Be Held Liable To a 3rd Party?

Earlier this year, the New York Court of Appeals—the state’s highest court—ruled that physicians and healthcare practitioners could be found liable to third parties.

In Davis v. South Nassau Communities Hospital, 2015 N.Y. Slip Op. 09229 (December 16, 2015), the court extended a physician’s duty of liability and duty of care.

The Fact Pattern

A woman drove herself to the emergency room of the defendant hospital. While at the hospital, she received two different types of morphine-like painkillers. An hour and a half after being administered the two drugs, she was discharged from the hospital. She then went back into her car and drove across a double yellow line, striking a bus driven by the plaintiff Davis.

Cybersecurity 101: What Healthcare Providers Need to Know

From a legal perspective, cybersecurity means that all confidential information, including patient health information (PHI), in a healthcare provider’s database or server is protected, confidential, and completely compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

In order to do so, healthcare providers should:

1. Conduct a risk assessment of their data;
2. Develop and institute data security policies; and
3. Test the effectiveness of those policies to make sure that they are running correctly.

Is an E-Signature Legally Binding?

{2:55 minutes to read} With the increase in business conducted electronically, it is now possible to sign documents electronically. Electronic signatures are accepted on more and more documents, thanks to the Uniform Electronic Transaction Act of 1999. But they are not accepted everywhere, and they are not always equal to a physical, original signature.

Generally, contracts will contain a clause that states it can be signed by the parties to the contract in multiple parts and/or by facsimile, electronically or otherwise.  So, for example, if two parties are signing a contract at separate times and in separate locations, they could send scanned copies of their signatures, and once all signatures are received by all parties, that would be sufficient to bind them in the contract.

The Pitfalls of License Discipline for Healthcare Practitioners

{4:00 minutes to read} Healthcare practitioners should be careful: What happens with your professional license in one state may affect your existing or future license in another.

Many healthcare practitioners have licenses in multiple states. If your license in one state is affected by an action or investigation against you, it’s important to know that there may be reciprocity with other states. While each state has their own licensing rules, you may be in breach or there may be implications to other state licenses as well.

If a claim arises against you in any state, make sure to inform your attorney of every state where you are licensed. Do not just focus on the one state as it will not be in your best interests.

Proceed With Caution: What Physicians Need to Know Upon Receipt of a Subpoena

{4:00 minutes to read} Upon receiving a subpoena, an attorney can help physicians proceed properly by providing detailed clarification and explanations while concurrently minimizing precarious errors.

Before responding to a subpoena, it is important that physicians are aware of how regulations govern the release of patient information, as well as what circumstances qualify the subpoena as valid and appropriate.

Websites, Social Media and HIPAA — Do You Know the Requirements?

{4:40 minutes to read} In this article, I will discuss the requirements for websites & social media to be HIPAA-compliant.

As healthcare practitioners already know, the goal of the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is to protect the privacy and security of Protected Health Information (PHI). One thing many do not realize is that HIPAA has some very specific rules about how to protect PHI on the Internet.

First, it is important to understand the terminology.