Cassie’s practice primarily involves advising health care clients on transactional and regulatory matters. Cassie has served as deal counsel on a number of transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and affiliations for clients across the health care spectrum, including a Fortune 250 kidney care company, and providers of radiology services, addiction treatment, and behavioral health services. She also regularly acts as a subject matter expert, advising clients on HIPAA/privacy compliance, telehealth and other digital health matters, corporate practice issues, professional and facility licensing, determinations of need/certificates of need, and Medicare and Medicaid compliance. Cassie also has experience advising non-profit organizations on matters related to formation and corporate governance.
Throughout her career, Cassie has worked with providers, payors, and individual patients, so she understands the unique challenges facing clients in the ever-changing health care landscape. She enjoys working with interdisciplinary teams to come up with creative solutions to her clients’ problems.
Prior to joining Mintz, Cassie worked as in-house counsel at a national senior living company. There she advised the business on matters related to state and federal health care regulations, physician arrangements, reimbursement, fraud and abuse, and HIPAA/privacy. Cassie’s in-house experience informs current her practice, enabling her to anticipate and relate to clients’ legal and business needs.
Cassie is particularly passionate about addressing access to behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment, especially for underserved communities, and she currently serves on the Board of the South Boston Collaborative Center, a substance abuse and mental health treatment center located in South Boston.
Education
- Suffolk University Law School (JD, summa cum laude)
- Boston College (BA, cum laude)
Involvement
- Member, American Health Law Association
- Member, Boston Bar Association
- Board Member, South Boston Collaborative Center
Recent Insights
Viewpoints
HIPAA Amendments and Other Trump Regulatory Actions on Hold
January 21, 2021 |Blog
HHS Keeps On Sprinting with Proposed Modifications to the HIPAA Privacy Rule
December 14, 2020 |Blog
Events
Join WBL, Mintz and MDLive for a webinar that will examine how COVID-19 has transformed the delivery of telehealth services in just six months and predict which changes are likely to be permanent.
Viewpoints
HIPAA Amendments and Other Trump Regulatory Actions on Hold
January 21, 2021 | Blog | By Dianne Bourque, Cassandra Paolillo
In the waning days of the Trump administration, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a number of new initiatives, including proposed HIPAA amendments, discussed here, and a very recent COVID-19 related Notice of Enforcement Discretion. Under the Notice of Enforcement Discretion, published on January 19, 2021, OCR announced that it would not impose penalties for non-compliance with HIPAA on covered entities making good faith use of online or web-based applications for COVID-19 vaccination scheduling. With the swearing in of President Biden, these and other regulatory initiatives, including all regulations that have been sent to the Office of the Federal Register, but not yet published, are to be withdrawn until a department or agency head appointed by President Biden reviews and approves the rule.
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HHS Keeps On Sprinting with Proposed Modifications to the HIPAA Privacy Rule
December 14, 2020 | Blog | By Dianne Bourque, Michelle Caton
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is pushing ahead in its Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care with a new proposed rule, announced by HHS’ Office for Civil Rights on December 10, to modify the HIPAA Privacy Rule. This proposed rule follows HHS’ 2018 Request for Information on Modifying HIPAA Rules to Improve Coordinated Care, which sought to identify regulatory impediments to value-based care presented by HIPAA. With this proposed rule, HHS aims to “reduce burden on providers and support new ways for them to innovate and coordinate care on behalf of patients, while ensuring that [HHS] uphold[s] HIPAA’s promise of privacy and security,” according to HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan. It would achieve these objectives through a variety of updates to the Privacy Rule, which we highlight in this blog post, along with initial reactions from our HIPAA privacy team.
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Telehealth Update: Expansion of the Public Health Emergency, Telehealth Services for Home Health Beneficiaries, and a Special Event
November 12, 2020 | Blog | By Cassandra Paolillo
As COVID-19 infection rates continue to rise in areas of the country, telehealth continues to play an important role in the delivery of healthcare, especially to those most vulnerable to the virus. Existing telehealth waivers continue in effect under the Public Health Emergency, and new legislation seeks to expand telehealth access through home health services. Plus, join us for a webinar on the future of telehealth.
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CMS Announces Final Rule on ESRD Treatment Choices Model
September 24, 2020 | Blog | By Cassandra Paolillo
Last week, CMS announced the finalized End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Treatment Choices Model (ETC Model), which will test whether incentivizing home dialysis and kidney transplantation will reduce Medicare expenditures while maintaining or improving the quality of care furnished to beneficiaries with ESRD. This post summarizes how participants are selected, the specific payment changes, and the overall timeline.
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Telehealth Update: CMS Proposed CY 2021 Payment Policies, Extension of the Public Health Emergency, Increasing Access after COVID-19, and the Coronavirus Stimulus Package
August 5, 2020 | Blog | By Cassandra Paolillo, Ellen Janos
On August 4, CMS posted a proposed rule on CY 2021 Payment Policies, which included important updates about the expansion of Medicare covered telehealth services due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we cover this and other important developments related to telehealth access during the pandemic and beyond.
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Senate HELP Committee Signals Support for Permanently Expanding Telehealth Access
June 24, 2020 | Blog | By Cassandra Paolillo, Ellen Janos
Last week, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (“Senate HELP”) held a hearing entitled “Telehealth: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic," during which the Committee members expressed support for permanently expanding access to telehealth services. In this blog post, we discuss the Committee's proposals and the additional steps needed to permanently expand access to telehealth.
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CMS Administrator Verma Calls for Permanent Expansion of Telehealth Access after COVID-19. Will States Follow Suit?
June 10, 2020 | Blog | By Cassandra Paolillo, Ellen Janos
In an interview yesterday, CMS administrator Seema Verma expressed support for permanently expanding access to telehealth services after the COVID-19 public health emergency resolves. Here, we explore the nature and duration of the temporary executive and regulatory orders, emergency legislation, and sub-regulatory guidance, which have resulted greater access to telehealth while leaving a fair amount of uncertainty as to what the future of telehealth looks like.
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Not So Sweet: Failure to Timely Recall Contaminated Ice Cream Results in Major Consequences for Texas Manufacturer
May 11, 2020 | Blog | By Joanne Hawana, Cassandra Paolillo
Earlier this month, Blue Bell Creameries L.P. (Blue Bell) agreed to plead guilty to charges that it distributed contaminated ice cream products that were linked to a 2015 listeriosis outbreak. The Blue Bell outbreak made headlines in 2015, largely because it resulted in multiple cases of listeriosis and, tragically, three deaths. Aside from the obvious health-related consequences to the public and reputational harm to the nationally-known manufacturer of sweet treats, the basis for the various charges and causes of action related to the outbreak demonstrate the broad range of legal consequences, both civil and criminal, that can result from the failure to address food safety requirements and regulatory compliance more generally.
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Part 2 Proposed Rule Brings Clarity and Reduces Regulatory Burdens for Substance Use Disorder Providers, but Challenges Remain
September 3, 2019 | Blog | By Dianne Bourque, Cassandra Paolillo
On August 22, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (“SAMHSA”) announced a new proposed rule (the “Proposed Rule”) amending 42 CFR part 2 (“Part 2”), which is aimed at protecting patient records created by federally funded programs for the treatment of substance use disorder (“SUD”). The Proposed Rule is aimed at alleviating these concerns within the constraints of the underlying statute, while also addressing the increasingly urgent need to streamline SUD services in light of the opioid epidemic. Here we’ll discuss some of the major changes under the Proposed Rule while highlighting the challenges that remain.
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Recent Executive Order Makes the Road to Increased Healthcare Transparency Unclear
July 2, 2019 | Blog | By Cassandra Paolillo
Last week, President Trump signed an “Executive Order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First.” The order, which “seeks to enhance the ability of patients to choose the healthcare that is best for them,” includes a number of provisions requiring the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Treasury and others to pass regulations to increase transparency for patients. The following is a summary of the executive order and a brief overview of what providers and others in the healthcare industry can anticipate going forward.
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Events
Panelist
Dec
1
2020
Telehealth: What's Next?
Women Business Leaders of the U.S. Health Care Industry Foundation (WBL) Event
Online Event