October 2017 - Page 2 of 2 - Medical Association of the State of Alabama

UPDATE: Lawmakers Back to the Drawing Board for CHIP Funding Renewal

Posted by admin on October 6, 2017

UPDATED OCT. 12, 2017 — Legislation to renew funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program has stalled in the U.S. House as lawmakers continue debating how to pay for the program. This is the third delay requested by the Democrats as the lawmakers now work to mark up the legislation to extend funding for critical programs other than CHIP, such as Community Health Centers and to provide an additional $1 billion to Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program.

Both parties agree on the urgency of passing a CHIP bill. Federal funding for the program expired Sept. 30, and the longer Congress delays taking action, the tougher it will be on states.

Eleven states anticipate they will burn through their federal funding by the end of 2017, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and 32 states project they will exhaust federal funds by the end of March 2018.

Click here to read House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden’s Statement on CHIP and Extending Critical Public Health Programs

OCTOBER 6, 2017 — After being unable to come together to meet a Sept. 30 deadline that would have renewed funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program for five years, lawmakers in Washington were back at the drawing board this week looking for solutions to ensure federal funding for CHIP even though the Senate Finance Committee reached a bipartisan deal in mid-September to extend funding for five years.

Earlier in September, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee reached an estimated $8 billion bipartisan agreement to renew CHIP funding for five years and phase out the 23 percent Obamacare funding bump. States would have maintained eligibility through 2019, and after that there would be no so-called maintenance of effort for children of parents with incomes more than 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission has estimated that all states will exhaust their federal CHIP reserves in 2018 without an extension but warns that an extension alone will not be enough.

“If Congress extends funding but does not include the 23 percentage-point increase in the federal matching rate that was provided in the ACA, most states will still face shortfalls, since many assumed continued funding with the enhanced match rate,” it noted.

In Alabama, CHIP funding is split between Alabama Medicaid and the Alabama Department of Public Health. ADPH administers the ALL Kids program, which covers about 83,000 of Alabama’s children, while Medicaid provides covers for an additional 70,000 children.

The Medical Association, the Alabama Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, state lawmakers and a number of organizations advocating for children’s health care petitioned the Alabama Congressional Delegation to support reauthorization of a bipartisan CHIP funding bill before the Sept. 30 deadline. In a letter to the Alabama Congressional Delegation outlining support for CHIP reauthorization, the coalition cited the great strides made possible through CHIP in ensuring children have access to the care they need. As well, any reductions in federal CHIP funding could cause problems for not only Alabama’s ALL Kids program but also children enrolled in Alabama Medicaid.

Tags: children, CHIP, fund, Insurance, kids, Medicaid, pediatric

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How to Make HIPAA Disclosures During Mass Tragedies

Posted by admin on October 6, 2017

In light of the recent incident in Las Vegas, the Office of Civil Rights, the government entity responsible for HIPAA Compliance, issued clarification guidance on the ability of a health care provider to share patient information during such situations. While such incidents are taxing on health care providers in terms of treating capacity and ability, it is important that providers keep in mind the requirements of HIPAA regarding the disclosure of certain information to the public. A summary of OCR’s recent clarification is provided below, as it serves as a good reminder regarding what information can be shared under HIPAA in these types of mass-casualty, disaster scenarios.

Disclosures to Family, Friends and Others Involved in an Individual’s Care and for Notification.

You may share health information with a patient’s family members, relatives, friends, or other persons identified by the patient as involved in the patient’s care. You may also share information about a patient as necessary to identify, locate and notify family members, guardians, or anyone else responsible for the patient’s care, of the patient’s location, general condition, or death. This may include, where necessary to notify family members and others, the police, the press, or the public at large.

You should get verbal permission from the patient when feasible or otherwise be able to reasonably infer that the patient does not object to the disclosure. If the individual is incapacitated or not available, you may share information for these purposes if, in your professional judgment, doing so is in the patient’s best interest.

In addition, you may share protected health information with disaster relief organizations that are authorized by law or by their charters to assist in disaster relief efforts (g., American Red Cross), for the purpose of coordinating the notification of family members or other persons involved in the patient’s care, of the patient’s location, general condition, or death. It is unnecessary to obtain a patient’s permission to share the information in this situation if doing so would interfere with the organization’s ability to respond to the emergency.

Disclosures to the Media or Others Not Involved in the Care of the Patient/Notification.

Upon request for information about a particular patient by name, you may release limited facility directory information to acknowledge that an individual is a patient at the facility and provide basic information about the patient’s condition in general terms (g., critical or stable, deceased, or treated and released) if the patient has not objected to or restricted the release of such information or, if the patient is incapacitated, if the disclosure is believed to be in the best interest of the patient and is consistent with any prior expressed preferences of the patient. In general, affirmative reporting to the media or the public at large about an identifiable patient, or the disclosure to the public or media of specific information about the treatment of an identifiable patient, such as specific tests, test results or details of a patient’s illness, may not be done without the patient’s written authorization (or that of his/her personal representative).

Kelli Fleming is a Partner with Burr & Forman LLP practicing in the firm’s Health Care Industry Group. Burr & Forman LLP is a partner with the Medical Association.