Patricia M. Wagner, a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences and Litigation practices, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, authored “TCPA Implications for HIPAA-Regulated Communications,” an article published in Bloomberg BNA’s Health Law Reporter, which explains how a recent Federal Communications Commission ruling affects healthcare providers.

Following is an excerpt (see below to download the full article in PDF format):

Further, the Declaratory Ruling provides that ‘‘within the scope of the consent given’’ means that: the call must be closely related to the purpose for which the telephone number was originally provided. For example, if a patient provided his phone number upon admission to a hospital for scheduled surgery, then calls pertaining to that surgery or follow-up procedures for that surgery would be closely related to the purpose for which the telephone number was originally provided. As a result, health-care providers must evaluate the calls to ensure that they meet the two prongs: 1) the call must be within the HIPAA Privacy Rule’s definition of ‘‘health care’’; and 2) the call must be within the ‘‘scope’’ of the prior express consent. Each of these determinations may be more challenging for those operating in health-care systems that support a patient through the continuum of care.

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