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Tom Cruise’s “Mission Impossible” film series was launched back in 1996. Every few years since, new “MI” movies have updated the franchise while sticking to its core action-intrigue values.

Also debuting that year: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). While many in the healthcare industry believe the federal law protecting sensitive patient health information needs to be modernized, there are provider group concerns about the following:

• The privacy and security of sensitive medical data when it’s made more accessible
• Implementing changes during a pandemic
• Squaring the changes with other data-restricting regulations

The American Medical Association stated in a letter to OCR that it questions “the need for these changes, particularly at this time.”

The physician group noted that practices still face major challenges to alter IT and data exchange processes in order to comply with last year’s rules changes promoting interoperability. And of course, there’s ongoing pandemic-related overhead to contend with as well.

“We urge OCR to reconsider implementing a massive change to patient privacy laws in the midst of this transition,” the AMA wrote.

If finalized, t

The potential for abuse and addiction involving controlled substance medications makes it of paramount importance for doctors, pharmacies, hospitals and other health care providers to comply with laws and regulations enforced by the federal government’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Providers that administer and dispense controlled substance medications have dealt with unprecedented challenges over the past year, but the challenge to be DEA-compliant remains unchanged. However, the agency has issued guidelines related to pandemic-specific vaccines and other matters that add to the compliance burden.

Here are areas of concern for providers to be aware of as we all continue to make our way through this public health crisis.

Because of the rapid expansion of telemedicine during the pandemic, practitioners are authorized to prescribe certain controlled substance medications without in-person evaluations. Of course, those prescriptions must all be for legitimate medical purposes and issued in compliance with pertinent state and federal laws.

Registered providers are temporarily allowed to supply other registered providers with more than five percent of their dosage units. The DEA expects providers to be aware of when the exception expires. (Note: it expires when the public health emergency ends or the DEA modifies the exception.)