Category: Legal Watch
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Five Things to Consider When Selling Your Practice to a Private Equity Firm
By Howard Bogard, Burr Forman A growing number of physicians are selling their medical practices to private equity firms in order to “monetize” their practice, as well as to access capital and obtain operational efficiencies. In the Southeast, we are seeing consistent private equity activity in the specialties of anesthesiology, gastroenterology, dermatology, ophthalmology, oncology, ENT,…
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Identifying The Proper Documentation For End of Life Care
By Angie C. Smith In the midst of this global pandemic, there have been stories about prioritizing patient care based on the patient’s ability to recover. The stories are heartbreaking and highlight the need for people to have important discussions regarding advance care planning before they get sick and are unable to direct their own…
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Lights, Camera, Action…No!
By: Kelli Carpenter Fleming, Esq. The Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”), the entity responsible for HIPAA compliance and enforcement, has issued a series of guidance documents regarding the interplay of HIPAA and the COVID-19 pandemic. The most recent guidance serves as a reminder to health care providers to follow the requirements of HIPAA when speaking…
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Gov. Ivey Provides Physicians Liability Protections from COVID-19
Today, Gov. Ivey issued an executive order protecting physicians, their staff, and their practices from lawsuits related to COVID-19. The governor’s order, the eighth such supplemental emergency order issued by her administration since the pandemic began, provides a “safe harbor” for services affected by COVID-19 or Alabama’s response to the pandemic and from other COVID-19…
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COVID-19 State Liability Protection Bill to Be Filed
Alabama State Senator Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) is preparing to file a bill today to provide liability protection to physicians, health facilities and businesses from claims arising from COVID-19 and the state’s response to the pandemic. “These are unprecedented times and the Legislature must take swift action to protect physicians and businesses from COVID-19 frivolous lawsuits,”…
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Summary of Liability Protection from Starnes, Davis Florie, LLP
Starnes, Davis, Florie, LLP has drafted a summary with some guidance on documentation for physicians concerning some protection in response to potential liability issues facing physicians during the COVID-19 declared emergency. Governor Ivey’s March 13, 2020 Proclamation declared a state public health emergency. The Proclamation grants certain immunity from lawsuits if a provider in a covered…
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Summary of Telehealth Waivers as of April 1, 2020
By: Jim Hoover, Burr & Forman, LLP The changes made to the requirements for telehealth services since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic have been swift and substantial. For the first several weeks, it seems changes were made almost daily. As time has passed, the changes to telehealth have stabilized enough that a summary of…
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The Privacy Vulnerabilities of Zoom Software and Potential Alternatives
Over the past month, as more nationwide “Shelter at Home” orders have been issued and more companies have transitioned to telework, the need for online meetings and webinars has skyrocketed. To accommodate this new way of doing business, many have turned to a platform called Zoom. The problem? No one bothered to read the fine…
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Charting & Documentation During the Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic
The world’s memory of this virus will be different when lawsuits are filed two years from now and juries try the cases two to three years after that. The acuteness of the issues, the confusion, the limited resources and the changing daily directives will not be remembered in any meaningful detail. Accordingly, the Risk Management…
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Shift in Patient’s Right to Access Medical Records
By: Kelli C. Fleming, Burr & Forman The Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”), the government agency tasked with HIPAA compliance and enforcement, recently announced a change impacting a patient’s right to access his/her medical records—a change which is, given OCR’s history, surprisingly favorable to providers. One of the long-standing premises of HIPAA has been a…