Articles and Blogs

Introduction On October 23, 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (the “OIG”) issued Advisory Opinion 12-15 addressing a hospital’s arrangement to pay a per diem fee to physicians in exchange for providing on-call coverage at the hospital’s emergency department (“ED”). The OIG found that the arrangement could implicate the…Read More

The Court Turns the Tide of the Epidemic For several years now there has been a veritable epidemic of class and collective actions filed against employers claiming that employees were not paid for working through their meal periods.  These cases arose frequently where employees were subject to automatic meal period deductions of 30 minutes or…Read More

States Get More Time to Decide on Exchange In response to criticism from Republican governors, HHS moved back the deadline for states to declare whether they will set up their own health insurance exchanges or adopt the federal model. The deadline to file letters of intent is now December 14, 2012. While states must follow…Read More

On Monday, November 5, 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that it had reached a settlement with a Missouri-based health system (“System”) arising from financial relationships between the System and some of its employed physicians.  Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the System agreed to pay more than $9.3 million to settle…Read More

After an election that saw President Obama cruise to victory and Congressman Pete Stark lose his seat in Congress after 40 years, the Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”) will live on, though not without some changes.  Focus also shifts to the states and Congress, which must address numerous health care-related issues when it returns for the…Read More

I recently conducted a webinar with Teramedica on Establishing an Effective Records Management and Data Retention Program: Health Care Industry Considerations. This one-hour webinar helps health care organizations gain tactical insight into the essential legal and business requirements of establishing an effective records management and data retention program. Patient data storage and data access is…Read More

Employer’s Social Media Policy and Savings Clause Are Okay For the past two years, private employers have been struggling to understand just what the NLRB expects of them when it comes to Social Media Policies (among other things – confidential investigations; employment-at-will; off-duty access).  The NLRB General Counsel has even issued three separate Memos attempting…Read More

Several southeastern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) collaborated under the direction of ONC to analyze the country’s ability to respond to disasters through the use of Health Information Exchange (HIE).  This initiative, called the Southeast Regional HIT-HIE Collaboration (SERCH) project,  focused on the development of a strategic plan for sharing health information among states during…Read More

One Last Chance or Set Up to Fail? Faced with an underperforming employee, an employer will often give the employee a chance to prove himself one last time before termination.  Sometimes that approach can backfire if not done carefully – especially if the employee can claim some legal protection – like using FMLA.

CMS Issues 2013 Hospital Outpatient Rule Final Rule On November 1, 2012, CMS finalized the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (“OPPS”) and Ambulatory Surgical Center (“ASC”) rule.  The 2013 final rule updates Medicare payment policies and rates for hospital outpatient and ASC services beginning January 1, 2013.