Articles and Blogs

Members of today’s workforce generally fall into one of three classifications: employers, employees and independent contractors. Recently, federal and state agencies have zeroed in on employee/independent contractor classifications and have increased their enforcement efforts as a way to increase agency revenue.  For example, the Government Accountability Office estimates that unpaid taxes stemming from employee misclassification…Read More

Yesterday, CMS posted the following update to its Inpatient Hospital Reviews page: 

On May 2, 2014, CMS published a final rule (“Final Rule”) amending the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (“CLIA”) by fully implementing the Taking Essential Steps for Testing Act of 2012 (“TEST Act”) and establishing three categories of sanctions for proficiency testing referral (“PT referral”).

CMS Proposes Updating Hospice Payment Rates and Rules Changes On May 2, CMS issued a proposed rule that would update Medicare payment rates and the wage index for hospices serving Medicare beneficiaries.  As proposed, hospices would see an estimated 1.3% ($230 million) increase in their payments for FY 2015.  This increase is up from 1.0% in FY…Read More

According to a Federal Register notice published on May 5, physicians and teaching hospitals will soon be able to register with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) to receive notices from and access to CMS’s Open Payments database.  The Open Payments database will contain information about payments and other transfers of value that pharmaceutical…Read More

On May 8, 2014, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) announced that it had reached settlements with two health care organizations arising from alleged violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) Privacy and Security Rules.  The settlements result from the organizations’ failure to secure thousands of patients’ electronic protected health…Read More

The application of the Medicare therapy caps has been revised many times over the past several years.  Most recently, Congress passed the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (“Act”), which extends exceptions to the therapy caps and continues to apply services performed in outpatient hospital departments to the therapy caps until March 31, 2015.  In…Read More

Tax-exempt organizations should be mindful that Form 990-series information returns are due on the 15th day of the fifth month after a tax-exempt organization’s tax year ends.  Thus, if your organization operates on a calendar year basis, then your due date is May 15th.  Furthermore, organizations with a June 30 year end that previously obtained…Read More

Nearly all hospitals are prohibited by federal law from discriminating in employment based on race, color, sex, religion, ethnicity, disability and age.  Those that have certain types of federal contracts must go further by engaging in affirmative action.  Compliance with federal affirmative action laws is difficult and expensive, especially when audits are involved.  Unfortunately for…Read More

CMS Issues Proposed IPPS and LTCH Rule On April 30, CMS issued its hospital inpatient prospective payment system (“IPPS”) and long-term care hospital (“LTCH”) proposed rule for fiscal year 2015.  The overall payment update for fiscal year (“FY”) 2015 would be 1.3% for general acute care hospitals and 0.8% for LTCHs.