Health Law Advisor

To honor the 34th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), on July 26, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) signed a long-awaited final rule to improve access to medical diagnostic equipment (MDE) for people with disabilities (the “MDE Regulations”). Stressing that accessible MDE is essential for people with disabilities to have equal access to medical care and avoid poor health outcomes, the MDE Regulations, which were published by the Federal Register on August 9, 2024, amend Title II of the ADA (“Title II”) and apply to hospitals and health care clinics operated by state or local governments. The MDE Regulations create enforceable minimum standards for accessible design (as initially issued by the U.S. Access Board) covering MDE, including examination tables, weight scales, dental chairs, x-ray machines, mammography machines, and other radiological equipment commonly used for diagnostic purposes by health care professionals.

In full, the MDE Regulations and the accessibility standards they incorporate stand well in excess of 100 pages. To help our clients more readily understand what the MDE Regulations do and do not require, we are answering some of the most commonly asked questions here.

On December 1, 2022, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a bulletin warning that commonly used website technologies, including cookies, pixels, and session replay, may result in the impermissible disclosure of Protected Health Information (“PHI”) to third parties in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”). The bulletin advises that “[r]egulated entities are not permitted to use tracking technologies in a manner that would result in impermissible disclosures of Protected Health Information (“PHI”) to tracking technology vendors or any other violations of the HIPAA Rules.” The bulletin is issued amidst a wider national and international privacy landscape that is increasingly focused on regulating the collection and use of personal information through web-based technologies and software that may not be readily apparent to the user.