governmental regulation

An audit by the Department of the Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General found that most hospitals don't have policies about copying and pasting health information in electronic health records, iHealthBeat reports. That could lead to health care fraud and abuse such as fraudulent billing and incorrect information being entered into patient records. Only 24% of hospitals had a policy regarding the "improper use of copy-and-paste functions within EHR systems," iHealthBeat further reports.

Separately, Government Health IT reports that earlier this month the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services decided to propose a delay in the next two stages of its program to incentivize healthcare providers to adopt "meaningful use" of electronic health records in exchange for governmental incentives.

The Hill reports on the oral arguments held in the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday on the authority for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate pollution that crosses state lines. The case could be tied because Justice Samuel Alito Jr. recused himself, leaving four justices each from "the bench's liberal and conservative wings," The Hill also reports. 

At issue is a rule by the EPA requiring 28 states to cut back on their coal-fired power plants that "'contribute significantly'" to the air problems in other states, The Hill also reports.

Five regulatory agencies are going to be voting today on the Volcker rule, which limits the ability of banks to invest in hedge funds or trade the money they hold for their own gain, The New York Times reports. Meanwhile, "lobbyists for Wall Street banks and business trade groups," including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are hinting that they will litigate to undercut the rule, The Times further reports.

At the same time as the financial sector plans to fight the rule to some extent, "Wall Street is also throwing resources into compliance.  Banks are writing new compliance manuals, training their traders and rewriting computer programs that effectively automate whether a trade is out of bounds under the Volcker Rule," The Times also reports.

The five agencies are the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Comptroller of the Currency.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has agreed to buy eight TV stations from Allbritton Communications Co. for $985 million. But the Federal Communications Commission is questioning Sinclair's plan to use "sidecar companies" in order to purchase the TV stations and skirt the FCC rules "governing the number of stations a broadcaster can own in a particular market," The Wall Street Journal reports. The move by the regulator is "an unusual level of scrutiny for a tactic that has helped fuel broadcast-industry consolidation," The Journal also reports. Among other things, the FCC asked Sinclair to show its sidecar companies are "financially independent and aren't controlled by Sinclair," The Journal further reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court is going to hear oral arguments tomorrow about the cross-state feud over pollution, USA Today reports. At issue is the Environmental Protection Agency's rule that "as many as 28 upwind states, mostly in the Midwest and South, ... slash ozone and fine particle emissions for the benefit of their Middle Atlantic and Northeast neighbors," the newspaper reports.

According to USA Today, 24 states want the circuit court ruling striking down the rule upheld by the justices. But nine states and six cities are asking for the rule to be reinstated.

In 1910, President Taft signed the Buy Indian Act into law, The Washington Times reports. The law requires the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs to give preference to American Indian-owned businesses in awarding contracts and funding. But the Interior Department only just approved the rules that will enforce the legislation, The Washington Times further reports. As a result of the law, an estimated $45 million would go to American Indian-owned and -operated businesses each year.

(I wonder how many other laws never had their implementing regulations put into place.)

ProPublica reports on the lack of regulation for assisted living and how this puts the elderly at risk.

Nursing homes for elder Americans (who tend to need much more skilled nursing care than the elderly living in assisted living facilities) face much stricter regulation. Not so with "assisted living facilities, [which] at least initially, were meant to provide housing, meals and help to elderly people who could no longer live on their own," ProPublica reports.

Assisted living facilities tend to be free to decide how much staff their facilities should have and don't have to be inspected by outsiders very frequently.

 

The Federal Trade Commission is set to regulate connected devices that share consumer data. Or as GigaOm more pithily says it: the Internet of Things. Why does this matter? GigaOm reports: "There are two issues at play here, one being the privacy of consumer data and the other being the security of the networks delivering that data. The privacy issue, however, also contains a security dimension since the devices can share things that affect a person’s safety — such as where they live and whether or not they are home."

Moreover," EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argues that the privacy implications of connectivity start with the devices, which could allow a person to be tracked continuously across a variety of networks," GigaOm also reports.

GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham argues for a middle ground between stifling a new industry and consumer privacy.

Even as China's economy continues to thrive, issues with consumer safety have arisen not only with products sold abroad in the United States but domestically. In a promising sign that the rule of law is catching up to China's economic growth, Chinese consumer safety rules have been tightened. The changes, Reuters reported, "increase consumer powers, add rules for the booming Internet shopping sector and stiffen punishments for businesses that mislead shoppers."