Healthcare Finance News Turns to Manatt Partner on HIPAA Modifications
"HIPAA Final Rule Alters Marketing Practices"
Healthcare Finance News
January 21, 2013 - Healthcare Finance News turned to Manatt's Robert Belfort, a partner in the firm's Healthcare Division, for insight into a long-awaited HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) final rule to help safeguard patient health information.
As reported by Healthcare Finance News, the HIPAA Privacy and Security Omnibus final rule fills in gaps and clarifies and finalizes some changes to safeguard the privacy, security and enforcement of patient information. Industry experts noted that fundraising was one of the major changes in the final rule for providers and other covered entities.
Under the previous HIPAA privacy rule, a hospital could only use limited demographic information about its patients for fundraising purposes, said Belfort.
"It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the patient reaction is. Right now patients shouldn't be getting fundraising solicitation where they can see they've been targeted based on the nature of the services they got. I don't know whether patients will have a negative reaction to getting solicitations that indicate fundraisers have looked at their data in more detail," Belfort said.
Read the article here.