Insights

On Monday, May 6th, the Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) published a final rule to implement Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act[1] (“Section 1557”), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics), in covered health programs or activities (the “Final Rule”). Here, we focus on the Final Rule’s application of nondiscrimination principles under Section 1557 to the use of “patient care decision support tools” in clinical care. This Final Rule responds to the President’s Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence and comments received regarding the proposed rule for Section 1557. Other key provisions of the Final Rule, including the restoration of protections for LGBTQI+ and pregnant individuals, are summarized in a companion alert.

On November 2, 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) released the calendar year (“CY”) 2024 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment Systems Final Rule (“CY 2024 OPPS/ASC Final Rule”). The final rule with comment period finalizes payment rates and policy changes affecting Medicare services furnished in hospital outpatient and ambulatory surgical center (“ASC”) settings for CY 2024.

On April 17, 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) entitled HIPAA Privacy Rule To Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy. The NPRM, which OCR released in response to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (“Dobbs”), aims to amend regulations implementing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (collectively, “HIPAA”) to mitigate concerns about reproductive health care privacy that have arisen as a consequence of the Dobbs ruling.  

Our health care landscape is rapidly transforming. As the health care space has become more digitized and more reliant on technology than ever before, artificial intelligence (AI), telehealth services, data analysis, and medical devices have become drivers of our health care system. Likewise, value-based care is becoming increasingly popular among delivery systems, leaving accountable care organizations (ACOs) to adhere to changing federal compliance requirements. The burden falls on health care entities to remain up-to-date on how care is evolving as federal and state compliance regulations and privacy concerns continue to develop.