An evolving regulatory landscape may be complicating hospices’ ability to effectively implement and use artificial intelligence technology. The top legal considerations involving AI center around protecting patient privacy and ensuring transparent innovation.

Hospices have leveraged AI to better predict patient trajectories, ease employees’ administrative burden, boost retention, and improve compliance and operational efficiency, among other purposes.

Avoiding the pitfalls of exploring varied AI application includes having robust processes for identifying and understanding updates in state and federal laws, according to Kathleen Snyder, senior counsel at the law firm Husch Blackwell. Snyder has also served in technology legal counsel roles at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, as well as at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS).

“The best way to describe the law is that it’s loaded with regard to AI-specific regulation,” Snyder said in a recent Husch Blackwell podcast. “The new administration has rolled back some of the previous administration’s executive orders regarding AI and the use of AI on the federal level. The federal law is definitely in flux. We really have to stay tuned, but I think the real action is going to be at the state level.”

AI regulations have seen a few changes in 2025 alone. Before leaving office, President Joe Biden issued an executive order designed to safeguard AI utilization and to support technology, energy, infrastructure and development.

The order was superseded later that month when President Trump issued an executive order citing that it “stifled” and presented “unnecessary government control” over AI innovation and deployment.

State laws have taken a different approach to technology oversight, according to Snyder. Ensuring transparent, safe utilization is often at the crux of state AI policies, she stated.

Newly proposed state bills have increasingly focused on protecting patient privacy, according to Snyder. These go beyond the parameters of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, which set security guidelines around patients’ protected health information.

One example is a new law in California that took effect Jan. 1 requiring health care facilities, clinics and physician offices to notify patients when using generative AI (GenAI) to communicate personal clinical information

Hospices must carefully navigate state and federal regulations as they explore AI innovation, according to Snyder. A key consideration is carefully vetting a technology vendor. Hospice providers need to understand how a technology platform collects, synthesizes and shares data in order to ensure compliant AI utilization, she stated.

“It’s really important to understand where your data is going,” Snyder said. “The impetus behind a lot of the legislation is that you want that transparency. You really want to make sure that as a provider you’re looking into what is happening with the data. This becomes more important as we move into actual clinical cases, where something worked in a hospital but might not work in a hospice space. The data is different. The population makeup is different, the case mix is different.”