Articles and Blogs

Executive Summary The Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) released an April 2014 report sharing the results of its investigation of home health agencies’ (“HHAs’”) face-to-face documentation.  The report details both the manner and method of OIG’s investigation and a number of its findings.  OIG noted that 32% of the home health claims did not have the requisite…Read More

Following recent news about the Heartbleed exploit, CloudFlare, a San Francisco-based security services company, challenged hackers to use Heartbleed to get private encryption keys that would unlock secure data. It reported multiple winners to its challenge. By obtaining the private key for an SSL/TLS certificate, an attacker could set up a fake website that passes the…Read More

Executive Summary April 16, 2014 is National Healthcare Decisions Day. The goal of the day is to encourage Americans to think and talk about their health care goals and communicate their health care decisions by executing advance health care directives. 

Wisconsin has joined the ever-increasing number of states legislating against employers’ access to employees’ and applicants’ social media sites.  On Tuesday, April 8, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed the Wisconsin Social Media Protection Act, 2013 Wisconsin Act 208 (the “Act”), into law, which prohibits both public and private employers, regardless of size, from requesting or…Read More

Burwell to Replace Sebelius as the Next HHS Secretary On April 10, Kathleen Sebelius announced she is resigning as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”). President Obama will nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), as her replacement. The White House will now begin…Read More

On Tuesday, April 8, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed three bills that are of particular interest to the health care industry. 

Three federal regulators have released a long-awaited report proposing the framework for regulation of health information technology (“Health IT”).  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (“ONC”) and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) are accepting comments on their proposed risk-based regulatory framework until July 7,…Read More

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (“ONC”) and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) are accepting comments on their recently issued final FDASIA Health IT Report, entitled Proposed Strategy and Recommendations for a Risk-Based Framework. The agencies are seeking public comment on the questions below. …Read More

 On April 3, 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (“ONC”) and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) released their long-awaited final report on health information technology (“Health IT”), entitled Proposed Strategy and Recommendations for a Risk-Based Framework. According to the report, the degree of…Read More

Executive Summary Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit released a decision related to Medicare Disproportionate Share Hospital (“DSH”) payments that has the potential to be a significant victory for hospitals appealing the Part C Medicare Advantage Days issue.  At issue was whether such days would be included in the…Read More