|
House and Senate Override Medicare Bill VETO
Albuterol MDI Transition
HIPPA Privacy Breaches -
Do You Have to Notify the Patient
Dear Member:
House and Senate Override Medicare Bill VETO
Late last evening, the House and Senate voted to override the President's veto of HR 6331, which was the Medicare bill that included Medicare Physician Fee payments. The bill now becomes law which will negate the 10.6% cut in payments to physicians who treat Medicare patients for 2008, and provides a 1.1% update in 2009.
Albuterol MDI Transition
The EPA has informed us that CFC – Albuterol containing Metered Dose Inhalers (MDI) will not be available for purchase after December 31, 2008. After that date, sale of these inhalers in the United States is prohibited. The EPA has recommended you begin to educate your patients now about this change. They have prepared an explanatory hand-out for your patients, which we have posted on the JCAAI web site. Please click the link below to view the hand-out:
http://www.fda.gov/cder/con sumerinfo/albuterol_cfc_phaseout.pdf
We recommend you download this hand-out and start distributing it to your patients. We expect there will be a lot of questions; especially since the replacement MDI’s are much more expensive than the old MDI’s. There are four hydro-fluoro-alkanes (HFA) MDI’s currently available as substitutes – three contain Albuterol (PROVENTIL®, VENTOLIN® HFA, and ProAir® HFA) and one which contains levalbuterol (XOPENEX® HFA). Because the HFA products are more expensive than the CFC albuterol MDI’s, we expect that some patients will be very resistant to the change and they need to know that unfortunately they have no choice. If you wish more information for yourself, you can access the EPA website at the following URL.
http://www.epa.gov/ozone/title6/ex emptions/inhalers.html
HIPAA Privacy Breaches – Do You Have to Notify the Patient?
In this age, when HIPAA and other patient privacy or security breaches have become all too common, a new issue has arisen – do you have to notify patients if there is a security or privacy breach of their protected health information? Although the federal HIPAA law does not specifically require that patients be notified of a privacy or security breach, thirty-nine states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have enacted laws requiring patient notification.
If you are a member of your state medical society, you should contact them if you have a breach of HIPAA or state privacy or security rules, to find out exactly what your obligations are within your state. The statutes that have been enacted by the various states define what information you must provide to the patient and who must be notified.
You should also note that the Federal Trade Commission is getting more involved in prosecuting privacy breaches. Most of their cases have been resolved by settlement agreements that included large fines and semi-annual audits for twenty years. JCAAI believes it is information such as this that should cause you to reexamine security controls on your patient’s protected health information, so you can avoid security (or privacy) breaches. In the past, the JCAAI published New News’ with additional suggestions regarding HIPAA security and privacy. They are accessible by clicking on the links below:
New News - 9-19-2007 - HIPAA Security
New News - 12-13-2007 - HIPAA Business Associate Agreement Forms and Checklist
|