Health Law Advisor

On April 1, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) released new guidance which requires hospitals to obtain informed consent from patients before practitioners, or medical or other students, perform important surgical tasks or sensitive or invasive procedures or examinations (“Guidance”). The Guidance aims to address increasing concerns over patient privacy, in particular the performance of sensitive examinations and invasive procedures on anesthetized patients.

The Guidance both revises the Hospital Interpretive Guidelines regarding ...

On October 18, 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”), which is tasked with enforcing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”), issued two new guidance documents pertaining to privacy and security risks associated with the use of telehealth services. One guidance document, entitled “Educating Patients about Privacy and Security Risks to Protected Health Information when Using Remote Communication Technologies for Telehealth,” is aimed at health care providers (the ...

On December 13, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the petition of New York health care workers seeking to stop the State from enforcing regulations requiring covered personnel of hospitals, nursing homes, public health centers, and other health care entities to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of continued employment, subject to narrow exceptions. The Supreme Court’s unsigned order allows the continuing enforcement of the regulations, as litigation of the multiple lawsuits challenging the statewide vaccine mandate for health care workers issued last August continues.