Articles and Blogs

NATIONAL How to avoid the legal risks of telemedicine HHS OCR Clarifies When Health Plans Can Share PHI Under HIPAA Brigham and Women’s, Emory and more join radiology AI pilot program Hospital groups argue CMS wage index proposal flawed How 4 health IT leaders balance strategy with execution: key thoughts from Ed Marx, Dr. Maia…Read More

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) agreed on June 28, 2019, to delay implementation of the recently finalized Conscience Rule. We wrote about the Final Conscience Rule and its potential impact on health care employers and organizations in our recent blog. The Conscience Rule prohibits discrimination of individuals who refuse to participate…Read More

In a previous article, we reported on CMS’s implementation of new billing edits that will Return to Provider any hospital UB-04 claims that identify a service location that is not an exact match to a Medicare-enrolled location identified in Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (“PECOS”). As previously reported, those edits were scheduled to be activated…Read More

On June 27, 2019, the last day of its 2018 term, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its third opinion in recent years addressing “the circumstances under which a police officer may administer a warrantless blood alcohol concentration (“BAC”) test to a motorist who appears to have been driving under the influence of alcohol.” Mitchell v….Read More

Senate Committee Advances Major Health Legislative Package The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (“HELP”) Committee passed a wide-ranging bill focusing on lowering health care costs to the chamber’s floor. This legislation is one of the only major health care bills that stands a chance at passing Congress this year. The measure aims to prevent…Read More

This is another article in a series discussing the complete overhaul of Part 483 to Title 42 of the Code of Federal Regulations the Requirements for States and Long-Term Care Facilities (“Final Regulations”) by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”). To view other articles in this series, click here. Beginning on November 28, 2019,…Read More

A new Indiana law imposes several written disclosure requirements that health facilities must provide to prospective residents. The new Indiana law also includes requirements to follow when developing and executing a resident care plan. New Written Disclosures to Prospective Residents The new Indiana law requires that health facilities provide written disclosures on the following to…Read More

NATIONAL Lawsuit sheds light on Amazon’s pharmacy strategy CMS’ first health informatics chief out after 4 months on the job Deals by UnitedHealth, other health giants draw antitrust scrutiny in D.C. Supreme Court to hear insurers’ bid for $12 billion in Obamacare money FDA must guard against bias in AI, focus on patient outcomes FCC…Read More

Minnesota’s “Wage Theft Law” goes into effect on July 1, 2019, resulting in significant changes to the state’s labor and employment laws. The new legislation imposes requirements on employers in Minnesota to provide notices and maintain records, create criminal and civil penalties for wage theft and grant additional authority to the Minnesota government agencies to…Read More

Senate Health Committee Releases Sweeping Health Cost Legislation On June 18, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (“HELP”) Committee released bipartisan legislation designed to address the cost of health care bipartisan health cost legislation after collecting extensive stakeholder feedback. The Committee will mark up this legislation next week on June 26. There are five…Read More