In this edition:

• 🔐 White House cybersecurity directive

• 🙅 LA County buys and cancels medical debt

• 👮‍♀️ Cleveland Clinic settles with Feds

• 💳 When to outsource revenue cycle

• And more!

White House to push cybersecurity standards to hospitals

The Biden administration intends to require hospitals to meet minimum cybersecurity standards after a single hack exposed the data of 100 million Americans.

The administration intends to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking in coming weeks to bring in minimum cybersecurity requirements for entities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid.

The health-care sector has been a recurrent target of criminal hackers, who have encrypted computer networks and stolen sensitive data in lieu of extortion payments.

LA County buys and cancels medical debt

Los Angeles County has launched one of the most ambitious efforts in the nation to tackle medical debt, targeting hospitals for their role in feeding a $2.9 billion problem.

For over a year, the nation’s most populous county has worked on a comprehensive plan to track patient debt and hospital collection practices; boost bill forgiveness for low-income patients; and buy up and forgive billions in medical debt — an effort helmed by its Department of Public Health.

“We believe the proposed DPH [Department of Public Health] debt relief program and data collection effort will only burden hospitals with unnecessary requirements, without ultimately helping to address the underlying issue,” wrote George Greene, CEO of the Hospital Association of Southern California, in a letter to the LA County Board of Supervisors.

The county analysis shows that medical debt disproportionately affects people of color, low-income people, and families with children. Having medical debt more than doubled the likelihood that patients would delay or forgo health care or prescriptions or be at risk of losing housing or going hungry.