Articles and Blogs

Six- to Nine-Month SGR Patch Likely as Deadline Looms With a March 31 deadline approaching, congressional committees continue to meet and discuss how to fix the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (“SGR”) physician payment formula. However, health care industry lobbyists now agree that a six-to nine-month “patch” of the existing formula is more likely than lawmakers reaching…Read More

On February 12, CMS hosted an Open Door Forum on the upcoming changes to the Nursing Home Compare Five-Star rating system.  These changes will be effective on February 20th.  Nursing facilities will be able to privately view their revised ratings by mid-morning on Friday, February 13, via their MDS portal login. The updated scoring system may cause…Read More

Recently, a federal District Court for the Northern District of Indiana ruled that pharmacists in Indiana are not subject to patient lawsuits for their refusal to dispense certain prescriptions but can be sued by prescribing physicians for related claims or face administrative actions by the state for improperly refusing to fill a prescription.  Therefore, pharmacies and pharmacists should carefully determine when they will…Read More

Written by David B. Honig and Ritu Kaur Cooper. On February 3, 2015, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that disclosures to the public officials responsible for managing the subject of a False Claims Act lawsuit did not qualify as “public disclosures” for the purpose of the FCA’s public disclosure bar. US ex rel. Wilson v. Graham…Read More

On February 6, the Food and Drug Administration (the “FDA” or “Agency”) released a finalized guidance (the “Guidance”) informing the public that the Agency does not intend to enforce any regulatory requirements applicable to several types of devices and software that transfer, store, convert, format and display medical data, specifically including medical image storage (“MIS”) devices,…Read More

On January 20, 2015, the Food and Drug Administration (the “FDA” or “Agency”) published two draft guidance documents designed to fulfill promises it made in the multi-agency Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (“FDASIA”) Health IT report. The first draft guidance is intended to promote the innovation of general wellness devices and software…Read More

In November 2014, the ECRI Institute¹ issued a report discussing issues of patient safety and adverse events linked to health information technology (“IT”) products. The report comes in the form of an annual list of top ten health technology safety hazards. According to the ECRI Institute, although many facets of health IT have a positive…Read More

Bipartisan Stark Law Correction Bill Reintroduced On February 5, Reps. Charles Boustany (R-LA) and Ron Kind (D-WI) reintroduced the Stark Administrative Simplification Act (H.R. 376). The legislation corrects the disproportionate penalties a hospital can incur under the Stark Law for having an unwritten, unsigned or lapsed agreement that is otherwise compliant with federal fraud and…Read More

Health care data breaches are not new. The breach announced by health insurer Anthem on February 5, 2015 is notable mostly for its scope. According to Anthem’s statement, hackers utilized a very sophisticated cyber attack to gain access to the information of potentially 80 million current and former Anthem members. The information accessed included names,…Read More

with Drew B. Howk On Monday, February 2, well-respected Federal District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff awarded costs to the prevailing Defendant in US ex rel. Associates Against Outlier Fraud v. Huron Consulting, Case No. 09 Civ. 1800(JSR). The case had a long history. The Complaint was originally filed in February 2009. It was unsealed ten months later…Read More