Articles and Blogs

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) entered into a Resolution Agreement with General Hospital Corporation and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, Inc., collectively known as Mass General (“Mass General”) to resolve a potential violation of the Privacy Rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996…Read More

On the judicial front, you’ll recall that U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled in late January that the “individual mandate” provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Affordable Care Act”) was unconstitutional, and declared the rest of the Act inseverable and void.  In that ruling the Judge stopped short of issuing an injunction,…Read More

Yesterday the Supreme Court unanimously decided that an employer will be liable for the bias of a supervisor even when the ultimate decision maker was not personally motivated by unlawful bias. This decision has enormous consequences for human resource professionals. Now, if an adverse employment action is taken based on tainted information provided by a…Read More

Many large construction projects, including hospitals and health care facilities, utilize a Fast Track project delivery process. The goal of the Fast Track method is to bring a facility from concept to reality in a fraction of the time of a normal building project. Naturally, this process provides certain benefits and risks that an owner…Read More

On February 24, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service released a revised Schedule H (with corresponding instructions) to the Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax, which expands the reporting requirements for tax-exempt hospitals.  More specifically, the new Schedule H includes questions designed to monitor and enforce compliance with Internal Revenue Code Section 501(r), as added…Read More

On February 23, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) released Announcement 2011-20 (“Announcement”) indicating the IRS will grant certain tax-exempt hospitals an automatic extension to file their 2010 Form 990 and supplemental schedules, including Schedule H.   More specifically, the IRS will grant an automatic three-month filing extension to tax-exempt organizations that operate one or more…Read More

HIPAA covered entities are required to submit reports of smaller breaches that occurred during calendar year 2010 to the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) by March 1, 2011 pursuant to the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule.  Reports must be submitted electronically through OCR’s breach notification web page at: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/breachnotificationrule/index.html The Breach Notification Rule requires covered entities…Read More

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) issued a Notice of Final Determination finding that Cignet Health of Prince George’s County, MD (“Cignet”) violated the Privacy Rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”). HHS imposed a civil money penalty (“CMP”) of $4.3 million…Read More

Executive Summary For several years, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) has taken the position that teaching hospitals are exempt from the annual H-1B cap on the basis of affiliation agreements with institutions of higher education where clinical training for students is provided onsite at the hospital.  With increasing frequency, USCIS is now taking…Read More

Executive Summary After making significant revisions to the Hospital Conditions of Participation Interpretive Guidelines for Anesthesia Services (“Interpretive Guidelines”) only thirteen months ago, CMS has once again revisited and revised the Interpretive Guidelines. An advance copy of the newly revised Interpretive Guidelines was published January 14, 2011 and was effective immediately. The Interpretive Guidelines include…Read More