Manatt Healthcare Partner Comments on HIPAA Final
Rule
"HIPAA Final Rule Brings Changes to Marketing,
Fundraising"
Healthcare Finance News
March 11, 2013 – Manatt's Robert Belfort, a partner in
the firm's Healthcare Division, spoke to Healthcare Finance
News about the HIPAA Privacy and Security Omnibus final rule
that was issued by the U.S. Department of Health & Human
Services on January 17.
As reported by Healthcare Finance News, the final rule
fills in gaps, clarifies and finalizes some changes to safeguard
the privacy, security and enforcement of patient information. The
modifications are in response to the 2009 HITECH Act in the
stimulus law, which strengthened the Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act (HIPAA.)
Under the previous HIPAA privacy rule, a hospital could only use
limited demographic information about its patients for fundraising
purposes, said Belfort.
"Many of my hospital clients have had an interest in targeting
fundraising based on the nature of the services a patient received
or who their doctor was, and having doctors make personal appeals
to the patients, or targeting, say, cancer fundraising at people
who had been treated for cancer. They really were not permitted to
do that under the prior rule," he said.
Now that's been loosened so that information about the type of
department a patient was in within the hospital and who their
physician was can be used for fundraising. Patients have the right
to opt-out, and hospitals will have to include a notice on all
fundraising communications that the patient has the right to
opt-out of solicitations, Belfort said.
"It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the patient
reaction is," Belfort said. "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."
Read the article
here.