Monday, December 14, 2020
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is pushing ahead in its Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care with a new proposed rule, announced by HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on December 10, to modify the HIPAA Privacy Rule. This proposed rule follows HHS’ 2018 Request for Information on Modifying HIPAA Rules to Improve Coordinated Care (RFI), which sought to identify regulatory impediments to value-based care presented by HIPAA, and comes on the heels of HHS’ recent changes to the rules implementing the Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark Law.
With this proposed rule, HHS aims to “reduce burden on providers and support new ways for them to innovate and coordinate care on behalf of patients, while ensuring that [HHS] uphold[s] HIPAA’s promise of privacy and security,” according to HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan. It would achieve these objectives through a variety of updates to the Privacy Rule, which are listed below, along with initial reactions from our HIPAA privacy team.