Health Law Advisor

On April 1, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) released new guidance which requires hospitals to obtain informed consent from patients before practitioners, or medical or other students, perform important surgical tasks or sensitive or invasive procedures or examinations (“Guidance”). The Guidance aims to address increasing concerns over patient privacy, in particular the performance of sensitive examinations and invasive procedures on anesthetized patients.

The Guidance both revises the Hospital Interpretive Guidelines regarding ...

Introduction

Following the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade, the federal government, pursuant to President Biden’s Executive Order (the EO) took several steps to protect reproductive health privacy, some of which we previously discussed here. Specifically, the EO called for agencies to protect “women’s fundamental right to make reproductive health decisions.” Shortly following issuance of the EO, the Biden Administration created its HHS Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force, requiring all relevant federal agencies to draft measurable actions that they could undertake “to protect and bolster access to sexual and reproductive health care.”