Lawmakers are increasingly working to restrict gender-affirming care.

As of March 2025, 27 states have banned or put restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors, according to data from the nonprofit think tank the Movement Advancement Project. And in January, President Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to limit access to those services, though it’s unclear how the order would be enforced.

Much of that legislation is fueled by “misinformation” and misunderstanding of what gender-affirming care for minors entails, Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute, a think tank and research organization at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Healthcare Brew.

“What we’re seeing with trans healthcare is that ideology is being treated as far more important than reality, and the result of that is, unfortunately, that a lot of trans people, especially trans kids, could get harmed by that,” Redfield said.

Learn more about gender-affirming care here.—MA

HIPAA could soon get a long overdue makeover.

In January, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) introduced the first new rule for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act—the law that protects patients’ private healthcare information—in more than 15 years. It came with a plethora of new regulations for how covered entities should go about protecting a patient’s health information.

Covered entities include health plans, healthcare intermediaries, and providers.

The proposed regulations would require all covered entities to implement security measures like multi-factor authentication, maintain inventories of all assets that contain or transmit patient data, and conduct annual audits to ensure they’re following the rules.

The updates are “more in alignment with current best practices in cybersecurity” than the original HIPAA rules created in the ’90s and early 2000s, Steven Teppler, chair of cybersecurity and data privacy at the law firm Mandelbaum Barrett, told Healthcare Brew.

Here’s how HIPAA’s first update in over 10 years might impact the industry.—MA

Welcome to March’s On Rotation!

This month, we saw changes at Cigna, Blue Shield of California, and University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Health. Check out who’s moved around at health companies, insurers, hospitals, and more.

Here’s a noncomprehensive roundup of the past month’s career shifts.

Have a job announcement to share? Drop Caroline or Cassie an email at [email protected] or [email protected].

Ricky Bloomfield: Health device maker Oura, creator of the wearable Oura Ring, announced Bloomfield as its chief medical officer on March 20. He was most recently at Apple, where he served as clinical and health informatics lead and worked on the tech giant’s health records products.

Steve Eckert: Health tech consulting firm Nordic named Eckert as chief growth officer on March 18. He previously worked as chief technology officer at Cook Children’s Health Care System based in Fort Worth, Texas.

Check out our latest roundup of executive moves here.—CM