The Ongoing Report of ClingantryThe Report

Colorado's AI law (requirements around AI systems not discriminating against patients) now takes effect June 30, 2026 — pushed back from its original February date. A companion healthcare-specific rule adds a plain but important protection: your staff can't let an AI system be the sole reason a patient's coverage or care is denied. A human still has to be involved in that decision.

The federal government's rulebook for approving cloud software (FedRAMP) got a major overhaul, and it's already active as of July 4, 2026 — not something coming later this year. The old "Low/Moderate/High" security tiers are gone, replaced by new tiers called Classes A through D. If any of your software vendors handle government-adjacent data or claim FedRAMP approval, it's worth asking them directly whether they've moved to the new system, since some requirements become mandatory before January 1, 2027.

You may have heard that HIPAA now requires encrypting all patient data. It doesn't — not yet. Federal regulators proposed making encryption mandatory (it's currently just "recommended"), but that proposal has not been finalized into law as of this writing. There's no deadline to comply with yet. Once it is finalized, organizations would get 60 days before it takes effect and 240 days after that to actually comply — so there will be advance warning. Worth watching, not worth panicking about yet.

If you operate in Texas, there are two separate AI laws to know about, not one. The first, HB 149, is the broad rulebook for how AI systems can be used — it's been in effect since January 1, 2026. The second, SB 1188, is narrower but easy to overlook: it requires your staff to tell patients when AI was used in their diagnosis or treatment. That one has actually been in effect longer, since September 1, 2025. If your compliance team only checked the first law, you may already be missing a disclosure requirement that's been live for almost a year.

The most recent breach filed with federal regulators, on July 1, 2026, affected 8,157 people at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services — and it wasn't a computer hack at all. It involved paper and film records. Easy to forget when most breach news is about hackers: mishandled physical records are still a reportable breach, and still something your front-desk and records-handling procedures need to guard against.

Minnesota Epilepsy Group, a single-specialty outpatient practice, reported a hacking incident affecting 80,061 patients on June 5, 2026. The takeaway for any smaller or specialty practice: attackers aren't only targeting big hospital networks or national insurers. If your organization is smaller, that is not protection — you're still a target, and this-size breach is common.

Xsolis — a company whose AI software helps hospitals and health plans decide whether a patient's stay or treatment gets approved — reported a hacking incident affecting 1,396,519 people on June 5, 2026. Why this one matters beyond the number: this isn't just a generic IT vendor, it's a vendor making decisions about patient care. If your hospital uses Xsolis or a similar utilization-review AI tool, this is worth a direct conversation with that vendor about what happened and whether your patients' data was involved.