Health Care

The HIPAA Omnibus Rule goes into effect today, which officially starts the clock for covered entities, business associates, and their subcontractors to begin updating their agreements, forms, policies, procedures, and practices to meet approaching compliance deadlines.

Acting CMS Administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, recently reaffirmed the agency’s concern that the increased use of electronic health records (“EHRs”) has contributed to increases in fraudulent billing practices by providers.

Transparency in healthcare reached a new level over the weekend when the Association of Healthcare Journalists (AHCJ) unveiled a searchable database of past Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) hospital deficiency reports, formally known as “Form 2567s.” 

To ease the administrative burden on hospitals and academic medical centers, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is introducing a new accreditation model. Dubbed the Next Accreditation System (NAS), the new process will be rolled out starting in July 2013.

In a newly issued Report, the OIG has expressed concern regarding CMS’s lack of oversight of P&T Committee conflicts of interest. As the entities responsible for making Medicare Part D formulary decisions, P&T Committees must ensure that their decisions are made based on scientific evidence and not based on the personal financial interests of committee members.

When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published the final rule (Final Rule) implementing the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (Sunshine Act) last month, it ushered in a new regulatory landscape.

In its most recent advisory, Mintz Levin’s Health Care Enforcement Defense Group reviews the key health care fraud enforcement trends from 2012 in its Year in Review report, as it did for 2011.

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) released their Annual Report for the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (the “Program”).

Last week, federal regulators released a Proposed Rule outlining accommodations for religious employers that object to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate. The Proposed Rule expands the range of employers that qualify for the existing religious exemption and outlines promised accommodations for other religious employers.

Yesterday the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) filed a proposed rule (the Proposed Rule) that would make significant changes to existing regulations governing the proficiency testing (PT) process mandated by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA). 

ML Strategies has posted its weekly Health Care Reform Update.  This publication provides timely and concise information on  implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and other state and federal administrative and legislative activities related to health care reform.

As described in a blog post earlier today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the Final Rule (the Final Rule) implementing the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (Sunshine Act).

The long-awaited final rule (the Final Rule) implementing the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (Sunshine Act) has arrived at the Federal Register.  It amends key definitions and adds new terms; retains broad reporting provisions but includes new limitations; exempts certain continuing medical education (CME) payments from disclosure; and includes additional reporting guidance.

After the Second Circuit’s split decision in U.S. v. Caronia, holding that truthful off-label marketing is protected under the First Amendment and thus cannot be prosecuted under the misbranding provisions of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), I predicted in a previous post that the government would file a motion for rehearing and would eventually take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On January 14, 2013, a group of stakeholders, including the AARP and the AFL-CIO, urged the Obama Administration to issue the long-awaited final rule (the "Final Rule") implementing the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (the "Sunshine Act").

Yesterday the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services formally announced the 106 new Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) participating in the 2013 Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) cycle. CMS also announced that 15 of the new ACOs qualified to participate in the Advance Payment ACO Model. 

In Advisory Opinion 12-21, the OIG concluded that a Federally qualified health center’s offer of grocery store gift cards to capitated managed care patients would not constitute grounds for the imposition of sanctions under the civil monetary penalty law’s beneficiary inducement prohibition or the Anti-Kickback Statute.

ML Strategies has posted its weekly Health Care Reform Update.  This publication provides timely and concise information on  implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and other state and federal administrative and legislative activities related to health care reform.

The Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reached its first settlement for a breach involving data regarding less than 500 individuals. Under the December 2012 settlement, the Hospice of North Idaho (HONI) will pay OCR a $50,000 penalty to resolve allegations that it violated the HIPAA Security Rule.

In OIG Advisory Opinion 12-20, the OIG determined that a proposed arrangement (the “Proposed Arrangement”) by a hospital (the “Requestor”) would not constitute grounds for the imposition of sanctions under the Anti-Kickback Statute (“AKS”).