Articles and Blogs

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) formally published its proposed regulations implementing changes to the Accounting of Disclosures provisions under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”).  The proposed regulations arise from requirements in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (“HITECH”), passed as part of…Read More

Ushering in a new era of fraud enforcement, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have been hosting a series of summits, webcasts and tweets on health care fraud prevention. A national Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) Provider…Read More

By law, U.S. employers must verify the identity and employment authorization for every worker they hire, regardless of the employee’s immigration status. To comply with the law, employers must complete Form I-9. Last week, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)  launched I-9 Central, a new online resource center dedicated to Form I-9, Employee Eligibility…Read More

A new free timesheet application to help ensure workers receive all wages earned has been issued and may lead to more wage and hour litigation. The U.S. Department of Labor yesterday announced the launch of its first application for smartphones, a timesheet to help employees independently track the hours they work and determine the wages…Read More

Executive Summary On May 5, 2011, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) published a Final Rule revising the hospital and critical access hospital (“CAH”) Conditions of Participation (“COPs”) governing the credentialing and privileging of telemedicine1 practitioners (“Final Rule”).  The Final Rule, effective July 5, 2011, will permit hospitals and CAHs contracting with distant-site2…Read More

We understand that the Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) Office of Audit Services currently is in the process of sending numerous Contact Letters to hospitals across the country in an effort to determine hospital levels of compliance with Medicare billing requirements.  As part of this audit, the OIG plans to review “known areas of compliance”…Read More

This installment of Hall Render’s Health Law Broadcast series on health care reform is designed to provide you with the insight, analysis and practical suggestions with respect to the various reform initiatives that will affect your organization.  On April 14, 2011, President Obama signed into law H.R. 4, the “Comprehensive 1099 Taxpayer Protection and Repayment…Read More

On April 4, 2011, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced another settlement in the national false claims investigation into the medical necessity of inpatient, one-day stay kyphoplasty procedures.  However, this $1.9 million settlement between the government and Rex Healthcare in Raleigh, North Carolina, is different from the more than two dozen settlements that have preceded…Read More

Employees who file internal oral complaints, who distribute union handbills on someone else’s property or who walk out over pay issues, even when no union is involved, gained more protections in a series of recent decisions. Employers will need to be on the lookout for these tricky legal situations so that the ever broadening rights…Read More