Karen Kidd reports: Written permission is not required for New York’s Comptroller’s office to subpoena a medical provider’s records to audit state-issued payments, the state appeals court has ruled. In its 14-page opinion issued Dec. 17, the seven-judge New York Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the Comptroller’s office’s subpoenas need not be accompanied by written patient…
Category: Healthcare
Germany Publishes Draft Regulation on the Reimbursement of Digital Health Applications
Ulrike Elteste, Kristof Van Quathem and Anna Oberschelp de Meneses of Covington & Burling write: Germany recently enacted a law that enables state health insurance schemes to reimburse costs related to the use of digital health applications (“health apps”), but the law requires the Federal Ministry of Health to first develop the reimbursement process for…
BULLETIN: HIPAA Privacy and Novel Coronavirus — from HHS OCR
In light of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is providing this bulletin to ensure that HIPAA covered entities and their business associates are aware of the ways that patient information may be shared under the HIPAA Privacy Rule in…
Australian government secretly releasing sensitive medical records to police
Felicity Nelson reports: The Australian government is releasing highly sensitive medical records to police through a secret regime that experts say contains fundamentally flawed privacy protections. The Department of Human Services fields large volumes of requests for Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) data from state and federal policing agencies each year….