Health Law Advisor

At the end of March, Florida joined the roster of states that have erected legal shields for health care providers against COVID-19-oriented liability claims. Concerned about uncertainty surrounding the emergency measures taken in response to COVID-19 and the effects that lawsuits could have on the economic recovery and the ability of health care providers to remain focused on serving the needs of their communities, the Florida Legislature passed CS/SB 72 on March 29, 2021.  Governor Ron DeSantis signed CS/SB 72 into law as Laws of Florida 2021-1.  This law creates two new statutory provisions - section 768.38 and section 768.381, Florida Statutes – effective on passage.

What Are the Liability Protections?

Section 768.381, Florida Statutes provides protection for health care providers regarding COVID-19-related claims, as follows:

• Complaints alleging claims subject to the law must be pled with particularity, or will be dismissed. This is a higher pleading standard than typically required for a civil complaint, and requires a greater degree of specificity.
• Plaintiffs must prove gross negligence or intentional misconduct. This is a higher standard than ordinary negligence or professional malpractice.
• Health care providers are provided with several affirmative defenses which, if proven, preclude liability. These defenses primarily relate to a provider’s substantial compliance with government-issued standards regarding COVID-19, infectious disease generally in the absence of standards specifically applicable to COVID-19 or the inability to comply with applicable standards in light of medical supply shortages.
• There is a one-year statute of limitations on COVID-19-related claims against health care providers, which is substantially shorter than that for simple and medical negligence claims. When this statute starts to run depends on whether the claim arises out of the transmission, diagnosis, or treatment of COVID-19, or from other circumstances such as a delayed or canceled procedure. Actions for COVID-19 related claims that accrued before the law’s effective date must commence within one year of the effective date.

In this episode of the Diagnosing Health Care Podcast:  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ("CMS") and the Office of Inspector General ("OIG") of the Department of Health and Human Services have at last published their long-awaited companion final rules advancing value-based care. The rules present significant changes to the regulatory framework of the federal physician self-referral law (commonly referred to as the “Stark Law”) and to the federal health care program’s Anti-Kickback Statute, or “AKS.”

Epstein Becker Green attorneys Anjali ...

2021 is set to be a landmark year for the number of jurisdictions raising wage floors across the country. According to a National Employment Law Project report, as of January 1, 2021, 20 states and 32 municipalities raised their minimum wage. By the end of 2021, the report tracks that as many as 24 states and 50 municipalities will increase wages for the lowest-paid workers.

Perhaps as a reaction to the steadily growing Fight for $15 movement or in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, 40 cities and counties will have met or exceeded a $15 minimum wage by the end of 2021. Eight states — ...

New from the Diagnosing Health Care Podcast:  The Biden administration has invoked the Defense Production Act ("DPA") to speed up the production of vaccines and increase the domestic production of COVID-19 tests, personal protective equipment (or “PPE”), and other essential supplies. Epstein Becker Green attorneys Neil Di Spirito, Constance Wilkinson, and Bonnie Odom discuss the administration's reliance on the DPA as it continues to operationalize its pandemic response, and the challenges these actions are likely to present for medical product suppliers.

Our colleague Robert O'Hara of Epstein Becker Green has a new post on the Workforce Bulletin blog that will be of interest to our readers: "OSHA Launches New COVID-19 Initiatives: With More to Come".

The following is an excerpt:

President Biden’s January 21, 2021 Executive Order (EO) on COVID-19 tasked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to: launch a national enforcement program, review and correct any shortcomings in their prior enforcement strategies and to determine whether any Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS) were necessary and, if so, to issue an ...

Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) applications are powerful tools that already have been deployed by companies to improve business performance across the health care, manufacturing, retail, and banking industries, among many others. From largescale AI initiatives to smaller AI vendors, AI tools quickly are becoming a mainstream fixture in many industries and will likely infiltrate many more in the near future.

But are these companies also prepared to defend the use of AI tools should there be compliance issues at a later time? What should companies do before launching AI tools ...

The Illinois Coalition to Protect Telehealth, a coalition of more than thirty Illinois healthcare providers and patient advocates, announced its support for a bill that would, among other things, establish payment parity for telehealth services and permanently eliminate geographic and facility restrictions beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many states, Illinois issued an executive order at the outset of the pandemic temporarily lifting longstanding barriers to consumer access to telehealth via commercial health plans and Medicaid.[1]  The executive order expanded the definition of telehealth services, loosened geographical restrictions on physician licensing requirements, and barred private insurers from charging copays and deductibles for in-network telehealth visits.

Now, House Bill 3498 seeks to make permanent some of those temporary waivers by aligning coverage and reimbursement for telehealth services with in-person care. If enacted, it would also establish that patients could no longer be required to use an exclusive panel of providers or professionals to receive telehealth services, nor would they be required to prove a hardship or access barrier in order to receive those services.  The bill does not include a provision that would permanently allow out-of-state physicians or health care providers to provide services in the state beyond the pandemic.[2]

In the Coalition’s announcement of support for this bill, it states that the use of telehealth over the last year has shown an increased adherence to patient care plans and improved chronic disease management.  “In recent surveys, over 70% of Illinois hospital respondents and 78% of community-based behavioral healthcare respondents reported that telehealth has helped drive a reduction in the rates at which patients missed appointments. Surveys of Illinois physicians, community health centers, and specialized mental health and substance use disorder treatment providers have also revealed similar dramatic reductions in missed appointments.”

Medical providers are often asked, or feel obligated, to disclose confidential information about patients.  This blog post discusses when disclosures of confidential medical information involve law enforcement, but the general principles discussed herein are instructive in any scenario.  To protect patient confidentiality and avoid costly civil liability arising from improper disclosures, it is imperative that providers ask questions to assess the urgency of any request and to understand for what purpose the information is sought by authorities.  Knowing what questions to ask at the outset prepares providers to make informed decisions about disclosing confidential information in a manner that balances the obligation to maintain patient confidentiality and trust with legitimate law enforcement requests for information aimed at protecting the public.

Our colleagues Susan Gross Sholinsky, Nancy Guzenhauser Popper, Eric Emanuelson, and Christopher Shur of Epstein Becker Green have a new post on the Workforce Bulletin blog that will be of interest to our readers: "New York City Council Establishes Board to Assess Employers’ COVID-19 Workplace Health and Safety Protocols and Training."

The following is an excerpt:

The New York City Council is planning to evaluate how effectively both the City, as an employer, and private employers disseminated and implemented COVID-19 workplace guidance over the past year with the goal of ...

Alaap B. Shah and Nivedita B. Patel, attorneys in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, co-authored an article in MobiHealthNews, titled “Unlocking Value in Health Data: Truveta’s Data Monetization Strategy Carries Big Risks and Responsibilities.”

Following is an excerpt:

In today’s world, data is power. Healthcare providers have massive amounts of rich health data at their fingertips. Yet historically, third-party vendors to healthcare providers often have derived financial benefits from secondary use of ...