Articles and Blogs

A federal district court in Nashville, TN has entered a summary judgment dismissal of a former Human Resources Director’s discrimination and retaliation claims. The case is significant because it explores the line between offensive social conduct that does not violate Title VII and adverse employment action that does. Discrimination Marie Hasting’s lawsuit asserted that Title…Read More

Recently, Lyft announced that its ridesharing service is now considered a covered benefit under the Arizona Medicaid program. This announcement follows implementation of new Arizona Medicaid regulations allowing ‘”rideshare”‘ companies to enroll as non-emergency medical transportation providers. Under the policy, participating Medicaid patients can request to schedule non-emergency medical transportation to ensure access to routine…Read More

Last week, a federal district court in Illinois entered judgment for Defendants in an FCA action against a self-proclaimed “one stop shop” health care referral management company, alleging anti-kickback and FCA violations for its arrangement with a care coordination organization for low-income seniors.[1] Originally filed in 2016, this case highlights how even an FCA case…Read More

On July 10, 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) voted unanimously to move forward with its new $100 million telehealth initiative, which seeks to bring telehealth services to low-income Americans, veterans and medically underserved communities. In its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC detailed its proposed telehealth initiative rules and anticipated program requirements. As currently envisioned,…Read More

On July 29, 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) released its proposed rule for Calendar Year (“CY”) 2020 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (“Proposed Rule”). Among many other changes, CMS proposed three key payment policy updates impacting hospital outpatient departments, including: (1) lowering the supervision standard for hospital outpatient therapeutic services from…Read More

This week, CMS released the 2020 Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (“OPPS”) and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System Proposed Rule (“Proposed Rule”). Among a host of other items, CMS announced its intent to continue paying Average Sales Price (“ASP”) minus 22.5 percent for most drugs acquired under the 340B drug discount program (“340B Program”)…Read More

In March of this year, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. reinstated the controversial EEO-1 Component 2 pay data reporting requirements. The current reporting deadline is September 30, 2019. The EEO-1 Pay Data Reporting Roller Coaster The EEO-1 is an annual report filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) that has historically collected workforce…Read More

Litigators and litigants should always be wary of templates, unconsidered boilerplate pleadings—and unnecessary motion practice. Last week, a federal court in Wisconsin struck boilerplate affirmative defenses that lacked “short and plain statement of the facts and…the necessary elements of the defenses.”[1] The ruling reinforced the Seventh Circuit’s standards for affirmative defenses—even though the judge thoroughly…Read More