As the Founder and Principal of Rising Tide Strategies LLC, Laura Hoffman works to advance policies that promote responsible use of data and foster trust in public institutions, emerging technology, and the clinician-patient relationship, while mitigating and correcting inequities. With perspective built on nearly 20 years of education and experience in public health, human rights, health care policy, and privacy law, she combines her formal training with subject matter expertise to provide informed, creative, and forward-thinking guidance to help organizations achieve their goals.
Laura most recently worked as Assistant Director of Federal Affairs for the American Medical Association (AMA) in Washington, D.C., where she developed advocacy and policy strategy while regularly engaging with Congressional lawmakers and federal regulators, including from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In addition to providing deep subject matter expertise to the AMA and the federal government with respect to HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2, information blocking, and civil rights in health care (e.g., Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act), she positioned the AMA as a voice in the national conversation around protecting non/under-regulated health data from misuse. Laura additionally advocated for better data segmentation and patient consent management capabilities within health information technology to promote interoperability while protecting patient privacy and aiding physician compliance with federal and state privacy laws. Working to advance these goals among a multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder group, she served as the inaugural co-chair of Shift Interoperability’s Policy and Legal workgroups.
Laura socialized among Congress and other stakeholders the concept that cybersecurity is a patient safety issue and worked to advance new laws that positively incentivize good cyber hygiene among small and rural physician practices that manage the health care sector’s increasing incidence of cybersecurity attacks. She regularly participated in HL7 standards development workgroups and ballot review—particularly those related to privacy, data labeling and segmentation, and prior authorization—and represented the AMA on the Center of Excellence for Protected Health Information’s National Advisory Group.
Prior to her work with the AMA, Laura was an associate in the health care practice group of a Washington, DC law firm, providing counsel to federal grantees (Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Section 330 community health centers, Title X programs, and community behavioral health organizations). While there, she authored the National Association of Community Health Centers’ HIPAA Privacy Toolkit and multiple publications on various regulatory matters, including adolescent access to confidential care and other patient privacy topics. She also provided weekly on-site corporate compliance guidance for the District of Columbia’s largest federally qualified health center (FQHC). While practicing, Laura completed a Legislative Fellowship with Oxfam America, focused on recruiting members of Congress to become Ambassadors for the organization’s
Laura’s career began in global health and international human rights. During law school, she was a Legal Fellow for Human Rights Advocacy for Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights where she assisted with litigation addressing the human rights implications of the lack of access to clean water in Haiti (including extensive research of the Inter-American Human Rights System) and analysis of the public health impact of the Exxon-Mobil Oil Pipeline in Chad and Cameroon’s indigenous peoples. Prior to and during law school, Laura lived and worked abroad— first in various regions of China while performing public health and microbiology research, and later in Beirut, Lebanon, where she provided social and legal assistance to trafficked women. Her love of travel continues to this day.
In addition to creating and delivering dozens of professional trainings and presentations, Laura is a member of the Practitioner Faculty at Loyola University Chicago’s School of Law and a Professorial Lecturer at the George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. She received her BS in Public Health from the George Washington University and her JD from Villanova University School of Law.