Law Students

HITECH Ready Business Associate Contract: accept no substitute!

Posted on June 29, 2010
HIPAA regulations and the HITECH Act mandate that a Covered Entity establish a written contract with a Business Associate in a number of instances, including whenever a Business Associate "manages" Protected Health Information on behalf of a Covered Entity...

Change is Hard Revisted: The Rider, the Elephant & the Path

Posted on June 26, 2010
Big problems require small solutions. It's not that the end state solution will turn out to be small or trivial, in fact it is likely to be quite encompassing, but rather that the ultimate solution can only be achieved through a series of smaller solutions...

Change is Hard: EHR Implementations, Compliance Touch Points & Chaos Theory

Posted on June 25, 2010
We understand that this blog has introduced concepts (e.g. wicked problems and agile methodologies) that may be foreign to healthcare providers. There are several reasons why we have felt compelled to do so: 1) we are bona fide geeks and can't help ourselves; and 2) more importantly, we believe that maybe (just maybe) some of our readers might benefit from our lessons learned (the hard way) in other industries.

Business Associates: That was then, this is now

Posted on June 21, 2010
Until the HITECH Act was enacted into law on February 17, 2009, as part of ARRA, a business associate's ("BA") compliance with HIPAA's Regulations was mandated only as part of the contract (see 164.504(e)(1) ) with its respective Covered Entity...

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Attacking the HIPAA Security Rule: Hug the Monster

Posted on June 18, 2010
Tthe subtitle of Part III is: "Attacking the HIPAA Security Rule: Hug the Monster." We are using military metaphors because the Security Rule presents a completely different challenge than the Privacy Rule. It appears at first glance (and second, third,...

HITECH/HIPAA and Meaningful Use: Part I

Posted on May 17, 2010
Since we first co-authored the HIPAA Survival Guide, HHS has provided key guidance regarding the definition of meaningful use under the HITECH Act. Compliance with HIPAA's Privacy and Security Rules is now an integral part of the meaningful use definition...

Patient as Platform: The Real (scary to some) Healthcare Reform!

Posted on May 08, 2010
The Patient as Platform reality is the Real Disrupter! What Doc Searls articulates, in the wonderful way that his muse allows, is what many of us that grew up in tech already know, and have started to become vocal about....

Clinical Groupware?

Posted on April 24, 2010
Clinical Groupware is a no brainer! Whatever this category of software service is eventually labeled, it is likely to have a major impact on the healthcare industry going forward. Contrary to what is stated in the link, we believe there are "enabling horizontal" examples of this category alive and well today, being used by millions in production environment across the globe...

The Security Rule Under HITECH: a Business Associate's Perspective

Posted on April 12, 2010
The First Edition of this "how to" guide for business associates is now available on the HSG Store. A Kindle version will be available soon. The following is an abstract: The most important step for building a ?good SR compliance...

Healthcare, Technology & Innovation?

Posted on March 10, 2010
Why yes, of course. Don't believe that healthcare innovation is real then read this interview where David Harlowe has a great discussion with John Glaser CIO of Partners. Here's one of many money quotes from the interview: So there are...

HITECH Act: Burn the Boats!

Posted on March 07, 2010
Legend has it that when Cortes landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he ordered his men to burn the ships that had brought them there to remove the possibility of doing anything other than going forward into the unknown. While...

The HITECH Act One Year Later: Real Healthcare Reform? Part V

Posted on February 26, 2010
You don't really need a crystal ball to pontificate as to why HITECH has been so disruptive. All you need is to be an educated observer of past disruption cycles in other industries (i.e. mainframe computing, print media, search, social media, etc.). The pattern repeats itself...

The HITECH Act One Year Later: Real Healthcare Reform? Part IV

Posted on February 25, 2010
We are certain that all of our readers will be happy to hear that HITECH's enforcement regime is alive and well, thank you very much. We don't enjoy (per se) being the bearer of "bad news" but here's a news flash: Privacy and Security regarding PHI will remain of paramount importance going forward!

The HITECH Act One Year Later: Real Healthcare Reform? Part III

Posted on February 24, 2010
One thing that can be said for certain: Meaningful Use ("MU") remains a wicked problem, despite the fact that HHS has recently issued its Interim Final Rules in an attempt to clarify. Well, there is also the HITECH Act mandate that requires them to do so, but lets not get hung up on the details.

The HITECH Act One Year Later: Real Healthcare Reform? Part II

Posted on February 17, 2010
What is the state of the HITECH rollout vis-a-vis its effective dates? A summary of the HITECH Act effective dates for its various provisions can be found here. On February 17, 2009 Upon Enactment Application of tiered civil monetary penalties...

The HITECH Act One Year Later: Real Healthcare Reform? Part I

Posted on February 15, 2010
Clearly the healthcare "business" is changing. What a difference a year makes. While most in the healthcare industry still have not ?awakened? to the compliance ramifications contained within HITECH, many others have. Given the feedback we have gotten via email and at speaking engagements recently, the awakening falls into the ?rude? category, despite the fact that our educational message has been well received and our audience has not engaged in ?shoot the messenger? conduct (i...

HITECH Act Survival Guide Released

Posted on February 01, 2010
We are pleased to announce Release 1.0 of the HITECH Survival Guide, which is now available and fully clickable online. In addition to the existing content our readers have come to rely on, Release 1.0 contains HHS' recently announced interim final rules regarding HIT Standards and EHR Incentives...

HITECH Act: Data Breaches are Expensive!

Posted on January 30, 2010
As this post summarizes, based on a recently released report by the Ponemon Institute, data breaches are indeed expensive. The Key findings from 2009 include (editorial comments in blue bold): Average total per-incident costs in 2008 were $6.65 million, compared...

HITECH Act: Yet another privacy breach?

Posted on January 28, 2010
Breaches Happen Period. It is not of question of whether a privacy breach will happen at your organization but rather a question of when? Here John Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center ("BIDMC"), reports on the case of...

Healthcare Moves to the Cloud?

Posted on January 19, 2010
CareCloud Raises $2.3 Million For Web-Based Physician Practice Software Suite. I don't know that much about CareCloud, but I do wish them well because this is going to be a super competitive field. The big EHR vendors are all (probably...

State Healthcare Laws & Their Implications

Posted on January 16, 2010
As most practitioners understand, state laws are far from harmonized in this space. Therefore, dealing with the differences in state law as the HITECH Act gains more prominence, will be challenging to say the least. These HISPC reports should be quite helpful going forward.

HITECH / HIPAA: What is informatics law?

Posted on January 03, 2010
We like to refer to interoperability as the compliance "touch points" that remain largely invisible to most internal compliance staff and a significant number of compliance attorneys as well. This issue is addressed in this month's issue of the HITECH / HIPAA Compliance Newsletter in an article entitled: "The Compliance Crisis: Five Strategies that are Guaranteed to Fail...

HITECH / HIPAA: HHS' New Rules

Posted on January 02, 2010
As discussed in this post, HHS has issued two new rules: the first pertains to health information technology (HIT) standards (see PDF); and the second to meaningful use (see PDF). These are interim final rules. They are now open for...

Healthcare: Innovation is the Real Disrupter!

Posted on December 15, 2009
Microsoft Buys Sentillion, The real "disrupter" in the healthcare industry is not the US government but rather the innovation that will be driven by some of America's most tech savvy companies. Microsoft, Google, IBM, Oracle, et. al, all want a...

Bill Clinton: It's 5 minutes 2 midnight for health care in America!

Posted on November 13, 2009
I wouldn't bet against America on healthcare, not because of some US government takeover of the health care system (a meme that is pure fiction), but rather because we STILL HAVE the most resilient entrepreneurial economy that the planet has ever known...

HHS & Meaningful Use: Innovation Happens!

Posted on November 12, 2009
The controversy surrounding MU will continue, but if the vendors displaying their ware at the WHIT Conference are a harbinger of things to come, and we believe they are, then innovation is increasing at alarming rate, and those providers that choose to remain on the sidelines waiting for the US Government to clarify every last term in the HITECH Act are going to get their "clocks cleaned" by more nimble competitors.

HHS: New Sheriff in Town?

Posted on November 03, 2009
On October 30, 2009 HHS issued the following release: >> The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued an interim final rule today to conform the enforcement regulations promulgated under the Health Insurance...

Danger: Smart Government at Work?

Posted on October 30, 2009
A privacy policy, however, is culturally and organizationally complex (i.e. a wicked problem) and historically we have not been so good at solving these kinds of problems. All the really tough problems facing us (and the planet) are wicked problems. We should collectively become more fluent in problem identification because if we don't understand the nature of the problem, we have little hope of solving it effectively or efficiently.

HIT/EHR Implementations are Wicked Problems!

Posted on October 27, 2009
As counter intuitive as fail forward fast may seem (i.e. even more so in the heath care industry where anything that smacks of failure is anathema), this is right prescription but will almost universally not be followed. Why? Because as a society we appear to be hell bent on using engineering methodologies even in cases where agile methodologies are clearly called for...

HITECH/HIPAA: Haven't Heard of HL7 Yet?

Posted on September 22, 2009
The pieces of this puzzle are coming together and they have nothing to do with "healthcare reform" and everything to do with the HITECH Act that was signed into law in February 2009. It is already a done deal. All this brouhaha over healthcare reform, while important in its own right, does not change the HITECH Act in the slightest.

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