Articles and Blogs

CMS has issued the final Inpatient Prospective Payment System (“IPPS”) rule for FFY 2017, restoring payments CMS has taken away from hospitals since FFY 2014, which relates to implementation of the Two-Midnight Rule that redefined the definition of inpatient admissions. Not only will there be no 0.2 percent decrease in IPPS payments in FFY 2017, but CMS…Read More

This is the third article in a series discussing the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) final rule (“Final Rule”) implementing Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”). Failure to comply with the Final Rule can result in the loss of federal funding, and individuals…Read More

Protections for pregnant employees has significantly increased in the wake of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Enforcement Guidance on Pregnancy Discrimination (updated June 25, 2015) and the United States Supreme Court decision in Young v. United Parcel Services, Inc., — U.S. —, 135 S.Ct. 1338 (2015). But what about employees who are not yet pregnant…Read More

Updated August 30, 2016 The Wisconsin Board of Nursing (“BON”) recently approved revisions to Wisconsin Administrative Code N 8 (“N 8”), the regulations governing advanced practice nurse prescribers (“APNPs”) in Wisconsin. An APNP is a nurse practitioner, nurse-midwife, certified registered nurse anesthetist or clinical nurse specialist who has been granted a certificate by the BON…Read More

As proposed by CMS, physicians and other MIPS1 eligible clinicians in physician groups that participate in the Oncology Care Model (“OCM”) would be subject to a MIPS scoring methodology different from the scoring methodology applied to most MIPS eligible clinicians, at least during the first year of MIPS.  The unique scoring methodology is likely to…Read More

On July 6, 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) issued a proposed rule addressing potential modifications to the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program (“Proposed Rule”).1 The Proposed Rule, if implemented as currently drafted, would eliminate the Pain Management dimension from the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (“VBP”) Program’s Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and…Read More

Since the first large U.S. health care ransomware demand hit the news in early 2016, attacks have been increasing in visibility and frequency, reaching a claimed 4,000 attacks per day. Ransomware is a kind of malware that infects computer systems, restricting access to systems or to data until a “ransom” is paid to the criminals….Read More

The Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”), Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), emailed notices to 167 covered entities on July 11, 2016 informing them they were selected for a HIPAA Phase II audit. Health care providers, health plans and health care clearinghouses were randomly selected by OCR from the audit pool. If your organization did…Read More

As previously discussed here, the EEOC recently proposed collecting salary information and hours worked data as part of the Employer Information Report (“EEO-1”).  Following a comment period, the EEOC issued on July 14, 2016 an amended Equal Pay Data Rule proposal. The EEOC specified the W-2 box to be used for reporting, changed the snapshot…Read More

Senate Committee Urged to Reform Stark Law On July 12, the Senate Finance Committee heard from hospital stakeholders on various options to reform the Stark Law. Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said he would like to undo what he sees as the law’s “outdated regulations.” Hatch also stated he would like the committee to do “something”…Read More