Last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued its 2023 Annual Report on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), which notes the CFPB’s activities and observations related to debt collection in 2022. The CFPB is continuing its trend of focusing its attention on medical debt.   The CFPB claims that the collection, furnishing, and reporting of medical bills is plagued by inaccuracies.  Servicemembers, older adults, and other patients submitted more than 8,500 debt collection complaints to the CFPB concerning allegedly past due medical bills in 2022.  C ..read more

On November 6, 2023, the HHS Office of Inspector General published a new compilation of compliance guidance under the title General Compliance Program Guidance (GCPG) for the healthcare compliance community and other health care stakeholders. Consistent with the OIG’s April 24, 2023 announcement of its plan to issue modernized, improved, and accessible guidance, the 91-page document is now available on the OIG’s website. The OIG stressed that the GCPG is voluntary and nonbinding, even though it used the word “should” throughout the document. While much of the information has been include ..read more

Last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) kicked off a rulemaking process that, if enacted, would reshape the credit reporting and debt collection landscape and could have a detrimental effect on medical and dental providers’ bottom line. As we previously noted, the CFPB, under director Rohit Chopra, continues to make medical financing and debt collection a priority of the agency’s agenda.  In prepared remarks on a call with Vice President Kamala Harris, Director Chopra noted that 58% of all third-party debt collection tradelines were for medical debt, making medical de ..read more

Disregard your Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act obligations at your own risk.  That’s the stark warning covered entities and business associates should take away from a recent settlement entered into by the nation’s largest publicly operated health plan and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights. Click here to read our full alert on this matter ..read more

This post from Immigration Practice Group Co-Chair, Catherine Wadhwani, suggests J-1 Physician Waiver sponsorship as a means of meeting patient needs. See this link for the full article: https://immigrationview.foxrothschild.com/j-1-waiver/j-1-waivered-physicians-meeting-patient-needs To learn more about this topic, please contact your Fox Rothschild immigration attorney or the author at cwadhwani@foxrothschild.com or 412-394-5540 ..read more

If you are involved with any health information, even if you are not covered by HIPAA, you should be aware of the government’s recent position that there may be serious privacy and serious risks with use of online tracking technologies that may be present on a website or mobile app that tracks consumer sensitive personal health information.  Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) issued a joint letter (“Joint Letter”) (https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/FTC-OCR-Letter-Third-Party ..read more

Brightree by ResMed (“Brightree”), a cloud-based management software platform for healthcare providers, has conducted its biannual interoperability survey, and issued its corresponding biannual Interoperability and Engagement Research Report. Most notably, and not surprisingly, 99% of the 400+ provider entities that were surveyed, said they are most likely to send patient referrals for post-acute care (PAC) to providers who are able to support interoperability needs. The full post can be found on our HIPAA & Health Information Technology blog. Brightree and MatrixCare Support Interoperabi ..read more

Federal regulators are focusing in on medical credit cards and financing plans and the roles that healthcare providers have in facilitating them.  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) is a federal agency charged with implementing and enforcing federal consumer financial laws in effort to ensure markets for consumer financial products are fair, transparent, and competitive.  The CFPB has made it a priority to monitor issues that impact medical financing and debt reporting under its current director, Rohit Chopra. In a report published earlier this month, the CFPB notes t ..read more

This blog post was first published on the Fox HIPAA & Health Information Technology Blog. It covers a critical new rule proposed by the Office For Civil Rights to close loopholes in HIPAA with respect to reproductive healthcare. For questions or follow-up, please contact Elizabeth Litten, Esq. at elitten@foxrothschild.com. As states enact and enforce various laws restricting, prohibiting, and even criminalizing abortion and other reproductive health care services, HIPAA rules that allow disclosure of patient information become potential privacy landmines. HIPAA loopholes that jeopardized t ..read more

Telehealth practitioners must take note of the DEA’s proposed rule making that would impact the way telehealth practitioners can prescribe controlled substances. The Ryan Haight Act and the Proposed Rules On March 1, 2023, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (the “DEA”) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking that would provide a variation of flexibilities for telehealth providers following the expiration of the Covid-19 Public Health Emergency (the “PHE”) on May 11, 2023. The proposed rules stem from The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008 (the “Act”). Th ..read more