Healthcare CLE

Attorneys can play a vital role in discussing advance care planning options with their clients prior to, during, and even after initial estate planning conversations. The Patient Self Determination Act and state laws govern the utilization of advance directives, the primary set of documents that explain a client’s advance care wishes. Advance directives typically consist of a living will or health care directive, which determines what types life-sustaining treatments the client may elect to receive, and a durable power of attorney for healthcare that affords them the ability to select a healthcare agent to make decisions should they lack decision-making capacity. This course will provide examples of a conservative approach to advance care planning using the state of Ohio as an example and contrast with the state of Washington’s approach in allowing natural death planning per its Natural Death Act.

Congress has often responded to historic medical catastrophes by enacting new regulations designed to prevent their recurrence. With respect to infectious diseases and vaccines capable of preventing them, a well-established regulatory system exists for providing oversight of the process of developing and testing vaccines, licensing their use, controlling their administration, and following up on post-licensure issues. This course covers the structure of FDA regulation in these areas, including its powers governing Emergency Use Authorization and related litigation.

The powerful public interest in preventing the spread of contagious diseases has led to a longstanding history of vaccination mandates being imposed as a prerequisite to access to various rights, such as education and employment. At some points in history, nonvaccination has even been punished with fines. Balancing out this imposition, systems have been established to compensate the small proportion of individuals who claim to have been harmed by an adverse reaction to a vaccination. This course will examine the legal basis and structure of vaccination mandates, including public mandates imposed by state and federal government entities and private mandates imposed by employers. The course will cover the common exemptions from vaccination and accommodations required by employers under federal law. The course will then turn to the function and operations of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and to other routes of injury compensation available for vaccines not covered under that program.

Amidst a pandemic quickly turning endemic, people are learning the value and power of the virtual world, from education to work to healthcare. A doctor on vacation in Hawaii conducts a follow-up appointment with her 83-year-old cancer patient in New York City while a Florida Cardiologist checks in to see why his patient in Nevada has such a low heart rate at the moment. These are just some of the exciting ways that telehealth can benefit patients and providers, but what are the rules in this fast-changing environment? This course will provide you with the tools you need to advise your clients on the legal and regulatory aspects of telehealth from both a federal and state perspective.

As more and more physicians and other healthcare practitioners enter the workforce, employers, whether they are hospitals, clinics or private practices, are updating their employment contracts to be more restrictive against practitioners. It is important when reviewing these contracts, not only to confirm that the terms of the offer are correctly included within the contract, but that practitioners will not be prevented from practicing within their field and/or within a reasonable area should their employment be terminated. In order to negotiate on their behalf, you need to understand the language utilized within the industry, including HIPAA, billing procedures, payment structures and restrictive covenants. This course will provide you with an overview of the key aspects, clauses and terms common to healthcare employment agreements. You’ll have a better understanding of whether the contract terms are reasonable in their scope, whether practitioners will have the ability to continue to provide services should they leave the employment and how to identify missing language that should be included in order to protect the practitioner.

Telehealth has exploded in recent years due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, although it has been around for a number of years. Similarly, telepharmacy is currently growing at a rapid pace, however, many states still have not adopted this practice yet or are not aligned with each other regarding the types of telepharmacy services that should be permissible. During this session, we will move through the timeline of how telehealth and telepharmacy first began, where the industries are now, and how much further we have to go. We cover the law, the practice, and the money to help stakeholders understand all considerations that are at play when thinking about telehealth and telepharmacy.

In January 2022, the Supreme Court issued two highly-anticipated opinions about the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Emergency Temporary Standard on vaccination and testing (“OSHA ETS”) and the CMS Medicare and Medicaid Programs Omnibus COVID-19 Health Care Staff Vaccination Interim Final Rule (“CMS Vaccine Mandate”), related to the COVID-19 vaccination. In this program, we will speak with vaccine law expert Brian Dean Abramson to review the relevant precedent and procedural history surrounding these two cases. We will use these decisions as a starting point for a broader discussion about the legal history and future of vaccination mandates in the United States.

Although the social significance of the female body has changed over time, the undercurrents of power, control, and stigmatization have remained constant. Following the digital health revolution, new technologies have emerged with the potential to quantify and further ostracize women under the guise of liberation. The female health technology (femtech) market promises to increase scientific and personal understanding of women’s bodies and destigmatize female sexuality. However, portions of the femtech industry have been built on inaccurate and stereotypical assumptions of women’s health and preferences. This presentation explores the legal and ethical challenges of the femtech sector and seeks to foster a dialogue on the legal and ethical pitfalls of monetizing women’s health data and equating women’s health with reproductive health and sexuality. The topics addressed in this presentation include (1) data inaccuracies and algorithmic bias; (2) faulty products and skewed research data; (3) design flaws and the “othering” of specific sub-categories of the female population; and (4) monetization of femtech data.

In this program we will identify options for government resources to provide for in-home or community based care care through Medicaid, Veterans Benefits and Private Pay solutions, review eligibility requirements for these programs and strategies to advise clients who may not currently meet eligibility criteria on how to position themselves to take advantage of the programs. We will also discuss common pitfalls when entering into a family caregiving arrangement and how to avoid them.

Telehealth has exploded in recent years due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, although it has been around for a number of years. Similarly, veterinary telehealth, or as we are calling it, TelePet, is currently growing at a rapid pace, however, many states are not aligned with each other regarding what services can be provided virtually and what needs to happen before TelePet services can be provided. During this webinar, we will move through the timeline of how TelePet first began, where the industry is now, and how much further we have to go. We will cover the law, the practice, and the money to help stakeholders understand all considerations that are at play when thinking about TelePet.

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is on a path to revolutionizing the healthcare industry. Moving at an unprecedented pace, IoMT has begun to transform the notion of value - based healthcare by improving health care delivery, efficiency, and convenience. The IoMT ecosystem, however, is unique and poses unusual privacy, security, and liability challenges. In particular, IoMT devices have the potential to cause significant bodily harm or death to patients, which is a consequence not comm on to other internet of things (IoT) products. This presentation explores (i) benefits and risks associated with IoMT, with a specific focus on privacy and security risks and (ii) whether existing liability frameworks, including products liability and stan ding, are sufficient to protect plaintiffs in IoMT lawsuits.

HIPAA celebrated its 25th birthday in August 2021. Given the current climate of increased cyberattacks and regulatory scrutiny, compliance is more important than ever. This webinar focuses on risk mitigation in relation to having adequate technical, administrative, and physical safeguards, as well as ensuring that the Privacy Rule’s obligations are met. The goal is to utilize recent civil and criminal enforcement actions to set the stage for utilizing NIST and other standards to avoid violations of HIPAA and the related laws – the HITECH Act, 21st Century Cures Act, and 42 CFR Part 2.

Also known as the “Lincoln Law”, the False Claims Act continues to serve as the United States Government’s primary tool to redress false claims for federal funds and property. In late-2021, a bi-partisan group of Senators introduced The False Claims Act Amendments of 2021 (S.2428), which builds upon the 1986 and 2009 amendments and addresses issues related to Escobar. The goals of the webinar are to highlight key areas of the False Claims Act, explain DOJ priorities, and highlight recent case law.

Whether a car accident, defective medical device, or other situation where injuries are sustained and damages are sought, lawyers need to understand the fundamentals of anatomy, physiology, conditions, and treatments. Procedural and evidentiary items must also be considered. The purpose of this webinar to provide substantive explanations of the following items: legal considerations, general medical terminology, musculoskeletal anatomy (with an emphasis on the spine), and surgical procedures.

Long term care expenses can deplete savings or impoverish many people very quickly, and most do not insure for such expenses. This CLE course will provide elder law attorneys with a method for Medicaid and Veterans’ Aid & Attendance planning and funding long-term care. We will discuss the purpose and function of asset protection trusts and review tips for preparing them for clients.

The changing reproductive health landscape has created confusion and fear among individuals identifying as female as to the privacy and security of their sensitive health data. Following the Dobbs decision, many women have abandoned their period tracking and female health technology (femtech) apps out of fear that their health data could be used to prosecute them for an abortion-related crime. This presentation (i) provides an overview of the shifting reproductive health landscape and privacy laws applicable to healthcare providers and femtech companies, (ii) describes how reproductive health data may be accessed and used by law enforcement officers, and (iii) provides suggestions for practical steps that femtech companies and healthcare providers can take now to help the women’s health industry regain consumer trust.

In 2022, health care enforcement remains a focus of federal law enforcement agencies. Over the last few years, the DOJ brought a record-number of prosecutions related to health care fraud and anti-kickback violations, particularly in the realms of telemedicine and laboratory testing services. Perhaps unsurprisingly, prosecutors have also targeted fraud and other criminal schemes related to the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020.
Such investigations and prosecutions can make the acceptance of funds from federal payers (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid) fraught with risk for providers and related entities. In this presentation, we’ll discuss the key issues and claims on which federal prosecutors, often aided by agents from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, have focused in recent investigations and prosecutions.

On May 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) implemented a paradigm shift in the manner in which patient electronic health information (EHI) is accessed, used, and disclosed through its publication of the Information Blocking Rule. Shifting from a landscape dominated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which imposed a permissible data disclosure framework under its Privacy Rule, the newly passed Information Blocking Rule imposes mandatory disclosure requirements on healthcare actors. Implementing the Information Blocking Rule’s requirements has proven challenging to many health care actors, who still struggle to achieve compliance amidst the shifting regulatory standards. This CLE provides an overview of the Information Blocking Rule and its exceptions, highlights common compliance challenges that have arisen in the information blocking context, and proposes risk mitigation strategies to help health care actors achieve compliance.

This program is designed to help attorneys understand the role of medical reports in litigation. We will take a deep dive into the benefits of understanding medical records, how to increase your vocabulary of “medical jargon" as an attorney, and explore the relationship between facts and the medical reports.

The most probative piece of evidence a long term disability insurance company will present in a lawsuit regarding disability benefits is the report of the company’s doctor. This course will outline strategies to limit the weight given to such a report or to get the report thrown out entirely. We will cover attacks on the credibility of the insurance. company doctor, attacks on the opinion itself, and attacks on the methods used to arrive at those opinions.