A few weeks ago I caught the movie ‘Delivery Man’ on cable. It stars Vince Vaughn as David Wozniak, a slacker who drives a delivery truck for his dad’s butcher business, hence the title. But there’s a double entendre at work, as the movie takes a twist when a lawyer tracks Wozniak down to inform […]
When I was in college, the tune “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by the Crash Test Dummies, a Canadian alternative rock band, hit #4 on the U.S. charts. The chorus of this weird song was simply humming. A friend of the band who was in medical school suggested the name ‘Crash Test Dummies,’ the colloquial name […]
In addition to fireworks and cookouts, this 4th of July also included Netflix’s release of Season 3 of ‘Stranger Things.’ The streaming service’s drama is set in the early 1980s and focuses on four boys and their encounter with creatures invading from a parallel dimension. The gateway between dimensions was inadvertently opened by the federal […]
Frank Sinatra is my favorite singer. In the 1950s, Sinatra popularized the concept album, which was a record containing songs focusing on a central theme. One such album was ‘Come Fly With Me,’ which was designed as a musical trip around the world. In addition to the title track, it featured the songs ‘Autumn in […]
In the summer of 1983, my parents took my buddies and me to see ‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi,’ and it was absolutely awesome. In the beginning of the movie, Luke Skywalker infiltrates the palace of the vile gangster, Jabba the Hutt, to rescue Han Solo who was frozen in carbonite. Jabba’s palace was […]
Do I Need a BAA? As explained in our last post, a health care provider may permit a business associate to create, receive, maintain, or transmit electronic protected health information (PHI) on its behalf only if a HIPAA-compliant business associate agreement (BAA) is in place between them. Likewise, a business associate may only allow a […]
Does your company provide goods or services to health care providers? If so, the subject of business associate agreements (BAAs) can be daunting. If your health care provider customer requests that you sign a BAA, you may wonder whether this agreement is actually necessary and whether the terms being presented to you are appropriate. In […]
A new federal statute imposes criminal penalties for kickbacks related to addiction recovery and related services. The Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (“EKRA”), passed last October as part of the anti-opioid SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, creates additional compliance requirements for substance abuse recovery homes, clinical treatment facilities, and laboratories, as well as for […]
This is a friendly reminder to covered entities and their business associates about the deadline to notify the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) of any HIPAA breaches that were discovered in 2018 and involved fewer than 500 individuals. The deadline to report such breaches to OCR is March […]
If you are a health care organization interested in improving your cybersecurity, then we have some good news for you. On December 28, 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) published technical guidance for small, medium, and large health care organizations looking to voluntarily improve their cybersecurity. The publication includes four parts: […]
