In hopes that the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) will soon end, Congress and the administration are evaluating the telehealth expansions and flexibilities put in place to respond to the PHE. As a result, the future for telehealth stakeholders remains uncertain. This article outlines various changes in Medicare telehealth reimbursement policy in effect during the PHE and identifies what actions would be required to make these changes permanent.
Increasing retirement plan-focused litigation has put insurance carriers and fiduciary service providers in difficult positions. In this article published in PLANSPONSOR, McDermott Partner Erin Turley said such litigation continues to be a “major focus” in the fiduciary insurance marketplace.
“It is a challenging market right now, to the point that we are looking at trying to think about ways that insurance products might be differently structured, to address what we hope will only be a short-term tightening in the market.”
The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) recently announced a new affirmative effort to detect and correct violations of the Fair Chance Act (FCA)—California’s ban-the-box law—by using online technology to identify words and phrases in job advertisements that violate the FCA. The FCA was first enacted on January 1, 2018, to prohibit employers with five or more employees from asking job candidates about their conviction history before making them a job offer.
Missing participants and cybersecurity are among the top challenges for retirement plan advisors, according to participants at the National Association of Plan Advisors’ 2021 NAPA 401(k) Summit in Las Vegas. During the Summit’s opening day workshop session, McDermott Partner Erin Turley said advisors should make an effort to discuss cybersecurity with clients in advance of a US Department of Labor audit.
“The plan document says X, the recordkeeping agreement says Y, and maybe the (summary plan description) says something different—if it’s even addressed in the SPD,” Turley noted. “So make sure all those documents sync and your process actually matches your documents as equally.”
On September 15, 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted 3–2 along party lines (with Republican commissioners dissenting) to issue a policy statement announcing an expansive interpretation of the FTC’s Health Breach Notification Rule, 16 CFR Part 318 (the Rule). According to the policy statement, the Rule applies to health apps and connected devices that are not subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) but are capable of drawing information from multiple sources—for example, through a combination of consumer inputs and application programming interfaces (APIs).
Telemedicine in the United States is facing an important crossroads. While telehealth services have demonstrated their value as an integral part of care delivery, federal and state waivers instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to expire soon. As lawmakers and agency officials consider updated or expanded digital health rules, regulators are expected to intensify their scrutiny of providers.
In this webinar, McDermott partners Jiayan Chen and Brian J. Boyle explore consumer protections for telehealth consumers, including the following:
Employment law continues to evolve, and it can be a challenge amid an ever-changing landscape of local employment laws for human resources executives and employment counsel at multinational businesses to maintain a consistent global corporate culture.
McDermott’s Global Employment Law Update brings you the key highlights from across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin and North America. Developed in collaboration with peer firms operating in more than 50 countries, this resource guide contains summaries of the laws and significant court decisions that impacted employers and employees all over the world. It includes:
The German federal cabinet recently approved the draft law on the digital modernization of healthcare and nursing care. The draft has been criticized for not taking into account lessons learned from the implementation of the 2019 digital health applications (DiGAs) law.
In this International News article, McDermott Will & Emery partner Dr. Stephan Rau and McDermott alumna Dr. Karolin Hiller provide insight into the planned German regulations on DiGAs and digital care applications (DiPAs).
The question of whether or not to make vaccinations mandatory for workers is being considered by employers globally, particularly those in the healthcare sector. In this video, McDermott Will & Emery partner Carole A. Spink outlines some of the most common employer-related vaccine questions, including incentives and data privacy concerns. Spink and McDermott partner Paul McGrath recently also wrote for McDermott’s International News about this topic.
In this video, McDermott Will & Emery partner Amy C. Pimentel explains the significance of health data transfers from the European Union to the United States in a post-Schrems II world. The recent Schrems II ruling invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield, holding that the US legal regime on access to personal data does not contain adequate limitations and safeguards. Pimentel and McDermott’s Romain Perray recently also wrote for McDermott’s International News about this topic.
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