The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to imminently issue its opinion in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (“Dobbs”). If the Court rules in a manner to overturn Roe v. Wade, states will have discretion in determining how to regulate abortion services.^[1] Such a ruling would overturn nearly 50 years of precedent, leaving patients, reproductive health providers, health plans, pharmacies, and may other stakeholders to navigate a host of uncharted legal issues. Specifically, stakeholders will likely need to untangle the web of cross-state legal issues that may emerge.

Most companies want to avoid FDA warning letters.  To help medical device companies identify violations that might lead to a warning letter, this post will dive deeply into which specific types of violations are often found in warning letters that FDA issues.

Background

As you probably know, FDA has a formal process for evaluating inspection records and other materials to determine whether issuing a warning letter is appropriate.  Those procedures can be found in chapter 4 of FDA’s Regulatory Procedures Manual.  Section 4-1-10 of that chapter requires that warning letters include specific legal citations, in addition to plain English explanations of violations.  The citations are supposed to make reference to both the statute and any applicable regulations.

As a consequence, to understand the content of the warning letters, we need to search for both statutory references as well as references to regulations.  Because statutes are deliberately drafted to be broader in their language, references to the regulations tend to be more meaningful.

How can health care employers use non-competes and other restrictive covenants to protect trade secrets? Attorneys Erik Weibust and Katherine Rigby explore the options available to employers, in an article for Law360.

In this episode of the Diagnosing Health Care Podcast:  What challenges are providers likely to face as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) prepares its permanent COVID-19 standard for health care workers?

Attorneys Denise Dadika, Bob O’Hara, and Tim Murphy review the provisions of OSHA’s temporary COVID-19 standard for health care workers and what’s expected to change under the permanent rules. They also discuss how the agency’s current enforcement push is impacting health care providers.

Since the passage of the Medical Device Amendments of 1976, FDA has regulated in vitro diagnostic (IVD) tests as medical devices, subject to a full suite of FDA requirements.  During that time, FDA has also asserted that it has the authority to regulate in-house tests developed and performed by CLIA-certified, high-complexity clinical laboratories (generally referred to as laboratory-developed tests or LDTs) but chose as a matter of enforcement discretion not to regulate LDTs.  Over time, the Agency chipped away slowly at LDT enforcement discretion, carving out certain kinds of tests (e.g., direct-to-consumer LDTs) and thus making them subject to regulation, but by and large did not take broad steps to regulate LDTs.

Establishing and maintaining effective systems to protect sensitive personal data and confidential business information from outside interference while also assuring that privacy interests are protected is among an organization’s highest priorities. Our security and privacy team at Epstein Becker & Green has written extensively about the guidance and best practices issued by federal and state regulatory and enforcement agencies. Execution, monitoring and continually updating these preventive practices define an organization’s first line of defense. But what happens in the event that an organization actually suffers a breach? Is there guidance that might be available, particularly to healthcare organizations, to deal with continuity and disaster planning (BC/DR) directed towards assuring resilience and recovery in the event of a potentially-disastrous cyberattack?

Much like the ambiguous landscape involving cannabidiol (CBD) products on the consumer market, an influx of delta-8 THC containing products for consumption has highlighted a recurrent regulatory issue surrounding the legality of hemp derived products at the federal level. The Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018 (the “2018 Farm Bill”), which, among other things, offered a federal definition of hemp and removed it from the list of Schedule I controlled substances, specifically carved out hemp derived products with less than 0.3% delta-9-tetrahydocannabinol (THC) on a dry weight basis, thereby allowing products that meet this definition to flood the consumer markets.

Connecticut becomes the fifth state to pass a comprehensive privacy law. Are you prepared for state privacy law compliance required in 2023?

The success of an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm depends in large part upon trust, yet many AI technologies function as opaque ‘black boxes.’ Indeed, some are intentionally designed that way. This charts a mistaken course.

On April 20, 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a nationwide coordinated enforcement action targeting COVID-19-related fraud involving charges against 21 individuals across nine federal districts, and over $149 million in alleged false claims submitted to federal programs.[1]

This marks the first significant DOJ enforcement action since Attorney General Merrick Garland named Associate Deputy Attorney General Kevin Chambers as the Director for COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement on March 10, an appointment President Biden previewed in his State of the Union address on March 1.