Author: Sara Jodka

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Ensuring Data Privacy in Genomic Medicine: Legal Challenges and Opportunities

Originally published in Healthcare Michigan, Volume 40,  No. 6 Introduction As the intersection of technology and healthcare becomes increasingly nuanced, the field of genomic medicine is rapidly evolving and expanding. Genomic medicine, or personalized medicine focusing on the data holding information on base sequence in an individual’s genome, uses an individual’s genetic information to guide healthcare …

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What the American Rescue Plan Means for Employers

The American Rescue Plan (ARP) provides $1.9 trillion dollars in economic stimulus for individuals, certain companies, and municipalities. This blog focuses specifically on what the ARP means for employers. First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) As of January 1, 2021, employers who were originally covered under the FFCRA (employers with fewer than 500 employees) were no …

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EEOC Confirms Employers Can Mandate Employees Have the COVID-19 Vaccine…With Restrictions

With the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine for mass consumption, we hypothesized in our piece titled “Can Employers Make Employees Get the COVID-19 Vaccine,” that employers would be able to require employees to get the vaccine subject to limited restrictions. We further noted that our guess was based on the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission’s (EEOC) …

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Can Employers Make Employees Get the COVID-19 Vaccine?

With two COVID-19 vaccines set to receive federal approval in the United States in the upcoming weeks, the next question is whether employers can make employees receive the vaccine. The short answer is…yes. And while the typical lawyer answer to any question is “it depends,” that concise “yes” does come with a few caveats. So, …

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Healthcare Provider Fined for Disclosing PHI in Response to a Yelp! Review

When healthcare providers are subject to a bad review on Yelp! or similar customer-review websites and apps, it can be difficult to hold back and not provide a response or at least attempt to clarify the situation. However, healthcare providers, including dental providers, must ensure that employees who handle their social media, including customer-review websites …

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App Users Beware: Most Healthcare, Fitness Tracker, and Wellness Apps Are Not Covered by HIPAA and HHS’s New FAQs Makes That Clear

Individuals who use healthcare apps such as fitness trackers, weight loss, wellness, exercise, etc., BEWARE! A couple of recent developments have highlighted the fact that most apps are not subject to HIPAA, which means that with broadly-worded privacy policy these healthcare apps can and do readily share healthcare and other data collected by the apps …

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Are Medical Marijuana Businesses Subject to HIPAA?

With medical marijuana legal in an ever-growing number of states, many businesses in the cannabis industry, particularly dispensaries, continue to wrestle with the question of whether they are subject to the Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act’s (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rule requirements. The bad news is that the answer is, it depends. The …

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Ohio Expands Telemedicine to Include Teledentistry

Telemedicine is a relatively new concept that allows healthcare providers to treat patients via the Internet through varying technology platforms, such as FaceTime or Skype. While the practice initially started as a means for healthcare providers to treat patients in rural or remote areas who were far away from local health facilities or in areas …

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How Employers Can Handle Their Biggest Threat to Data Privacy, Their Employees

Given the ever-expanding landscape of privacy laws and regulations, employers are becoming increasingly aware that they are responsible for data breaches caused by their employees. When looking to formally put obligations upon employees to modify employee conduct, employers tend to start with policy, such as in an employee handbook to allow a means of internal …

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The Grey’s Anatomy / Allscripts Ransomware Crossover Event: When Scripted TV Becomes Reality, the Script Goes Out the Window

For those familiar with the Shonda Rhimes juggernaut, Grey’s Anatomy, it is the story of surgical residents, fellows, and attending physicians as they work in the surgical wing of the fictional Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. In most episodes, the situations in which the doctors find themselves in are entertaining, but not necessarily how they might …

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