Law Students

Thanks to Bob Coffield at Health Care Law Blog for this excellent post regarding State Health Information Law, Business Practice and Policy.

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.

In general, state laws (e.g. regarding privacy and security) tend to be more stringent than federal law and therefore complementary to it (i.e. not preempted by the "supremacy clause" of the U.S. Constitution). In short, if a client's business spans multiple states, which in the healthcare industry is often the case, then a privacy lawyer must grapple with both federal law AND the particularities of state law in each state where a client operates.

It's a kind of full employment act for privacy lawyers, nonetheless we could do without it. Some harmonization of privacy and security rules across the states would be a good idea (understatement) as we move toward a national healthcare information infrastructure. This is especially true since the industry can expect more state AGs to bring privacy and security related actions.

To stay current on the HITECH Act and its quickly changing regulatory scheme visit the HIPAA Survival Guide website and/or sign up for Digital Business Law Group's free monthly compliance newsletter. Also, check out a FREE EHR Checklist and a FREE Online Backup Checklist, both provided from HSG affiliates.