Articles and Blogs

CMS recently announced the creation of a new role in the medical review process—a Provider Relations Coordinator.  The announcement is below and can be found on the CMS website.

OFCCP will host a free 90-minute webinar on June 12, 2014 concerning best practices for outreach and recruitment of individuals with disabilities, including disabled veterans.  Colet Mitchell and Shaun McGill from the Office of Disability Employment Policy (“ODEP”) will be the presenters.  Registration for the webinar is available here. 

Since the enactment of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (cleverly referred to by Congress as the “JOBS Act”) last fall, much has been written regarding its impact on private placements of debt and equity securities.  Most of the reports, briefings and articles have been accurate, but few have been practical.  We find one provision in…Read More

Recently, the Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) issued a Notice of Termination1 of Advisory Opinion 11-18, which was issued December 7, 2011,2 and rejected a similar proposal in Advisory Opinion 14-03.3

Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) published a proposed rule to update fire safety standards for certain types of facilities (“Proposed Rule”).  In the Proposed Rule, CMS proposes to adopt the 2012 Life Safety Code (“LSC”), with certain exceptions discussed below, to replace the 2000 version currently required by the Conditions of Participation…Read More

HHS Sued Over Appeals Backlog On May 22, the American Hospital Association sued HHS over a backlog at the third level of the Medicare appeals process.  The suit would compel HHS to meet the deadlines for reviewing an appeal, which at the Administrative Law Judge level is 90 days. 

Executive Summary On May 23, 2014, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued an opinion invalidating a final agency rule issued on July 23, 2013 (“Final Rule”) by the Health Resources and Services Administration (“HRSA”).  The Final Rule had served to clarify the scope of the 340B Program’s “Orphan Drug” exclusion. …Read More

Executive Summary On Friday, May 23, 2014, the Provider Reimbursement Review Board (“PRRB”) released an alert directed at hospitals with pending appeals on the issue of allowable “Medicaid Eligible” days in the calculation of hospitals’ disproportionate share (“DSH”) payments.  Hospitals with Medicaid eligible day appeals have 60 days to provide additional information to the PRRB.  Further,…Read More

A growing number of lawsuits, including collective action cases, are aimed at requiring employers to pay employees such as nurses and other surgical staff starting from the time they commence getting changed into their required work clothes. Until recently, hospitals and health systems may not have thought twice about requiring nurses to change into their…Read More

CMS Formalizes Plan to Extend Meaningful Use Deadlines On May 20, CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology formalized its decision to extend Stage 2 of the Electronic Health Records (“EHR”) Incentive Programs for an additional year (through 2016), meaning the earliest hospitals could move to Stage 3 would be…Read More