Health and Administrative Law Series, Episode 1: HIPAA

A Hard Look returns for Season 3 with its inaugural episode! Season 3 host Steven Valentino and guest Kirk Nahra, Partner at WilmerHale and an adjunct professor at American University Washington College of Law and Case Western Reserve University, walk through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or more commonly known as HIPAA. In this episode, Professor Nahra helps listeners understand the inception and development of HIPAA, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services’s regulatory approach and framework under the law. After tracing HIPAA’s history and regulatory structure, Professor Nahra then discusses the HHS notice of proposed rulemaking on access and coordinated care and how that may alter HIPAA’s current applications. We conclude with a larger discussion of the ongoing privacy debate and how HIPAA or a different national privacy law can be shaped to address the growth in collected health information. If you have any questions about this episode, the guest, or the podcast, or if you would like to propose a topic or a guest, please email Steven Valentino at [email protected].