This post was written by John Tan, Amy Yang, and Crystal Xu. In late December, China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), the successor organization to the Ministry of Health, issued two sets of anti-corruption regulations for the health care industry: the 2013 Regulations on the Establishment of a Commercial Bribery Blacklist for the … Continue Reading
On December 11, 2013, CMS released an advance notice of proposed rulemaking soliciting comments on specific practices for which civil monetary penalties may or may not be imposed for failure to comply with Medicare Secondary Payer reporting requirements. Among other issues, CMS is seeking comments and proposals on mechanisms and criteria that it would use to evaluate whether and when it would impose penalties for noncompliance with Medicare Secondary Payer reporting requirements.… Continue Reading
As mentioned on our Health Industry Washington Watch blog, the Food and Drug Administration issued a final guidance document on January 16, 2014 which provides specific recommendations on the content and format of Dear Health Care Provider (DHCP or “Dear Doctor”) letters. The recent guidance finalizes a draft guidance FDA published in November of 2010. To read … Continue Reading
The Privacy and Security Tiger Team, a subcommittee of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's HIT Policy Committee, has recommended that the Office for Civil Rights of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services abandon its May 2011 proposed rule to require covered entities to provide patients with a list of workforce members who have accessed protected health information contained in an electronic designated record set, concluding that the rule is overbroad and lacks value.… Continue Reading
FDA recently released a draft guidance entitled "Medical Devices Containing Materials Derived from Animal Sources (Except for In Vitro Diagnostic Devices)," which discusses the risks of transmitting various forms of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, including Mad Cow Disease (found in cattle), scrapie (found in sheep), chronic waste disease (found in deer), and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (found in humans). The guidance is applicable to all medical devices that contain or are exposed to animal-derived materials, with the exception of in vitro diagnostic devices.… Continue Reading
Reed Smith’s Global Regulatory Enforcement Law blog features a post on the recent launch of the new state portal in France. "The implementation of the French transparency regulation: first good news?," written by Reed Smith partner Daniel Kadar, discusses how the portal will allow health care companies to more easily disclose transparency information to the French government … Continue Reading
FDA has issued draft guidance designed to shed light on how drug companies should comply with FDA's postmarket submission requirements when interactive promotional media constantly changes. In laying out the criteria for how and when to submit interactive promotional media for postmarket review, FDA provides important insight into the type of social media promotion in which it is most interested.… Continue Reading
After receiving more than 2,000 comments to its April 2013 Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Department of Health & Human Services has proposed to amend the HIPAA Privacy Rule to expressly permit certain covered entities to report to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System ("NICS") the identities of individuals who are prohibited by federal law, for mental health reasons, from possessing firearms (commonly referred to as the "mental health prohibitor").
OCR has cited concerns that the existing HIPAA Privacy Rule may be preventing some state entities (which likely perform both HIPAA-covered and non-covered functions) from reporting to the NICS the identities of individuals subject to the mental health prohibitor. Therefore, HHS has proposed to add to the Privacy Rule new provisions at 45 CFR § 164.512(k)(7), which would permit certain covered entities to disclose the minimum necessary demographic and other information for NICS reporting purposes.… Continue Reading
According to a report published by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on November 21, 2013, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is not adequately overseeing and enforcing the HIPAA Security Rule. The OIG's report concluded that OCR failed to provide for periodic audits to ensure that covered entities were in compliance with the Security Rule, and failed to consistently follow its investigation procedures and maintain documentation needed to support key decisions made during investigations conducted in response to reported violations of the Security Rule.… Continue Reading
The theft of an unencrypted flash drive has led to an agreement by Adult & Pediatric Dermatology, P.C., of Concord, Mass., to pay $150,000 to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules. This case marks the first settlement with a covered entity for not having policies and procedures in place to address the breach notification provisions of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, passed as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.… Continue Reading
With the arrival of 2014, the Pennsylvania Department of Health ("DOH") is now authorized to grant "deemed status" for licensure purposes to hospitals that have been accredited by national accreditation organizations, such as The Joint Commission. This past July, Governor Corbett signed Act 60 of 2013 ("Act 60") into law, which amends the Health Care Facilities Act to require DOH to accept hospital surveys and inspections conducted by national accreditation organizations designated as acceptable to DOH in lieu of DOH's regular licensure renewal surveys. In addition, Act 60 extends the term of licensure from two years to three years for all Pennsylvania hospitals.… Continue Reading
As they do every year, authors from the Drug and Device Law blog have published a list of the top 10 best and worst medical device and pharma decisions of the past year. In addition to their standard analysis, this year two of the Reed Smith authors, Eric Alexander and Jim Beck, will be hosting a teleseminar on Wednesday, January 8th at 12 p.m. ET to discuss the decisions in more detail. Information on how to register can be found at www.reedsmith.com/events.… Continue Reading