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On December 10, 2020, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS") released a proposed rule that amends provisions in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ("HIPAA") Privacy Rule to facilitate individuals’ engagement in their care, remove barriers to coordinated care and reduce administrative burdens on the health care industry.
In 2018, HHS launched the “Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care,” an initiative to accelerate a transformation of the healthcare system, with a focus on removing “unnecessary obstacles” to coordinated care. On November 20, 2020, HHS and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) each issued a sweeping set of final regulations that introduced significant new value-based terminology, safe harbors and exceptions, as well as clarifications of existing requirements, under the federal anti-kickback statute (“AKS”) and federal physician self-referral law (“Stark Law”), respectively. We addressed these revisions in separate alerts available here and here. Like the changes to AKS and the Stark Law, the proposed changes to the HIPAA Privacy Rule are part of the Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care initiative.