2010 AHLA Hospitals and Health Systems Law Institute: Hot 2010 Health Law Legal Topics

Although it is cold today in West Virginia - I'm hoping it will be hot in Florida in February.

I thought I would take a moment on this cold wintry day to write about the hot health topics that will be discussed at the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA) Hospitals and Health Systems Law Institute scheduled for February 25-26, 2010 at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Miami, Florida (Conference Brochure PDF).

I will be speaking at the Hospitals Law Institute along with my colleague, Jody Joiner, Assistant Operations Counsel at Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System. Our topic scheduled for Friday, February 26 is Hospital’s Friend or Foe: The Age of Social Media and Health 2.0 where we plan to cover:

• The social media technology tools used by health care providers and hospitals
• Pros/cons and legal implications of social media and health 2.0 services such as blogs, wikis, social networking, podcasting, video sharing, etc.
• Best practices and development of policies and procedures which address staff and employees using social media

In addition to our session there will be variety of "hot" health law legal topic covered at the conference that will interest hospital administrators and their legal counsel, including sessions on government data mining to identify hospital compliance, understanding the recent ARRA HITECH developments impacting HIPAA and EHR, hospital/physician collaboration and relationships, best practices in hospital practitioner credentialing, peer review and privileging, voluntary disclosure strategies, hospital clinical research issues, and much more.

The AHLA Hospital and Health System Law Institute overlaps with the AHLA Physicians and Physician Organizations Law Insitute which will be held on February 24-25.The Physician Law Insitute will include "hot" physician topics on on call payments, Accountability Care Organizations, HITECH, disruptive physician behavior intervention, Stark issues for physicians, hospital/physician mergers, FMV for physician compensation and much more.

You can register for one or both. As an AHLA Member I regularly attend the Physician/Hospital Law Institutes every year or so because of quality and breadth of health law related materials for those who work in the health care industry. More information, along with how to register, can be found at the AHLA website:
Hospitals and Health Systems Law Institute
Physicians and Physician Organizations Law Insitute