Articles and Blogs

Providing notice to employees utilizing FMLA can be difficult. Unfortunately, it’s only getting worse. A federal court recently decided  the issue of whether an employer, by informing an employee of the FMLA recertification requirement via email, gave proper notice. Although the employer previously sent FMLA notices to the employee via email, the court found that…Read More

Earlier today, at an annual meeting of tax professionals, Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) TE/GE Commissioner Sunita Lough remarked that the IRS recently completed and provided Congress a report on the activities of tax-exempt and other hospitals. Under Internal Revenue Code Section 4959, the Treasury Department or its designee must review the community benefit activities of every Code Section 501(c)(3) hospital at least once…Read More

House Ways and Means Committee Advances Medicare Program Integrity Bill On Thursday, February 26, the House Ways and Means Committee approved four bills, including a broad Medicare anti-fraud bill and a measure that would require hospitals to notify patients when they are considered to be under observation status.  The anti-fraud bill (H.R. 1021) was introduced…Read More

Today the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals joined several other Circuit Courts in finding that an administrative review, and even a repayment to the appropriate government oversight entity, did not qualify as a “public disclosure” under the False Claims Act’s public disclosure bar.

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) recently issued Advisory Opinion 15-01,1 which provided a favorable opinion of an arrangement that offered Medicaid beneficiaries free diapers and playpens if the beneficiaries chose a provider’s program for the state’s Maternal Infant Health Program (“Arrangement”). OIG found that the Arrangement did not…Read More

Executive Summary On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced the Immigration Accountability Executive Action, a series of steps directed toward reforming the United States immigration system.   As part of these initiatives, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) Director León Rodríguez announced yesterday that the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) is extending eligibility for employment…Read More

On February 23, 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a rule change to be issued February 25, 2015 that ensures that all eligible employees in same-sex marriages will enjoy the same rights and protections under the Family Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) as employees in opposite-sex marriages.

A clearly irate Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment granted on behalf of Shell Exploration and Development Company, for the second time, and remanded with an order that the case be assigned to a new judge. In United States ex rel. Little v. Shell Exploration the Fifth Circuit, for the second time, reversed the trial court’s…Read More

A recent case out of the Northern District of Illinois Federal Court, US ex rel. Oughatiyan v. IPC the Hospitalist Company, Inc., demonstrates the high risk inherent in evaluation and management (E&M) coding for health care providers.

Executive Summary In response to the 2012 meningitis outbreak traced to tainted injections compounded by the New England Compounding Center, OIG recently published a study entitled “Medicare’s Oversight of Compounded Pharmaceuticals Used in Hospitals: OEI-1-13-0040” (“Study”).  OIG made the following findings: State survey agencies and accreditation agencies (e.g., The Joint Commission, HFAP, DNV, Center for…Read More