Articles and Blogs

Update as of 9/14/20: As we anticipated below, the US Department of Labor has issued revised regulations in response to the SDNY decision. Please see our post here for details. Update as of 9/10/20: As discussed below, previously, a federal judge in New York’s Southern District invalidated several aspects of the DOL’s guidance regarding the…Read More

The COVID-19 state of emergency has spurred unprecedented change in the realm of telehealth. This trend continues – but despite the headlines, there is more work to do. I. CMS Telehealth Proposals CY 2021 PFS On August 3, 2020, CMS posted the proposed Physician Fee Schedule rule (“Proposed Rule”) for CY 2021. The Proposed Rule…Read More

On July 24, 2020, President Trump announced four Executive Orders (“Executive Orders”) characterized as focusing on lowering drug prices via various mechanisms. These Executive Orders, described in more detail below, include: (1) Executive Order on Access to Affordable Life-saving Medications; (2) Executive Order on Lowering Prices for Patients by Eliminating Kickbacks to Middlemen; (3) Executive…Read More

On July 8, 2020, the Department of Justice announced it settled a qui tam action[1] involving alleged violations of the federal and state False Claims Act (“FCA”) for $72.3 million against an Oklahoma surgical specialty hospital, its managers, a physician group and two individual physicians. Part of the factual allegations underpinning the FCA claims arose…Read More

Mergers and acquisitions in the health care industry present unique challenges that are not often present when undertaking similar transactions in other industries. Because of health care’s highly regulated nature, parties may falter if a health care transaction is not reviewed and negotiated carefully with respect to the distinct concerns that health care presents.  Health…Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court recently expanded its unanimous 2012 ruling in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church,[1] where it first applied to a parochial school teacher the “ministerial exception” to federal anti-discrimination employment laws. The exception is an outgrowth of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Free Establishment clauses, which protect the right of religious institutions “to…Read More

The U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) Wage and Hour Division has updated its FMLA forms in order to make them more usable and streamlined after receiving substantial input from employers, industry associations, individual employees, worker advocacy groups, law firms and other interested members of the public. The DOL also announced that it would be seeking…Read More

On July 16, 2020, Blackbaud, a software company that serves nonprofit organizations, began notifying its clients of a May 2020 ransomware attack that potentially compromised individually identifiable information of individuals related to those clients. We are working with multiple clients on this matter, most of whom utilized Blackbaud in relation to their charitable foundations. If…Read More

On July 14, 2020, the Internal Revenue Service (the “IRS”), in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, issued Notice 2020-56 (the “Notice”) further postponing to December 31, 2020, the deadline for tax-exempt hospital organizations to complete a Community Health Needs Assessment (“CHNA”) and adopt an implementation strategy to meet the community health needs identified through…Read More