Articles and Blogs

On July 8, 2020, the Department of Justice announced it settled a qui tam action[1] involving alleged violations of the federal and state False Claims Act (“FCA”) for $72.3 million against an Oklahoma surgical specialty hospital, its managers, a physician group and two individual physicians. Part of the factual allegations underpinning the FCA claims... READ MORE

In April 2020, Hall Render published an article detailing state statutory, administrative and common law directives guiding commercial eviction and foreclosure actions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two months later, the pandemic has far from subsided with many states reporting rising rates of new cases and experts predicting a second wave sometime in the fall,... READ MORE

On September 6, 2019, OIG issued Advisory Opinion No. 19-05 (“the Opinion”) regarding the proposed purchase of real estate from an entity owned and managed, in part, by an excluded individual. The facts that gave rise to the Opinion involved a community health center receiving federal grant funding and Medicare reimbursement which was looking... READ MORE

As more hospitals and hospital systems merge and consolidate, as well as focus their time and attention on providing more outpatient care, recent market trends suggest adaptive reuse projects will become increasingly relevant to health care providers. As a follow-up to a recent Hall Render article defining “adaptive reuse” and outlining the incentives and challenges... READ MORE

For nearly 30 years, Palm Valley Cinema provided the community of Goodyear, Arizona with the biggest, newest Hollywood movie releases, from Saving Private Ryan to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, until it closed in 2016. However, new plans for the cinema will be focused on saving patients rather than providing a source of... READ MORE

During a speech on March 4, 2019, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar announced that the Trump administration plans to overhaul the Medicare payment system for certain dialysis services provided to patients with end-stage renal disease. The overhaul, as envisioned, would incentivize moving the place of treatment from outpatient clinics to home... READ MORE

Over the years, there have been a number of federal cases involving allegations that health care providers used improper real estate arrangements to induce referrals. Recently, two real estate-related cases have made headlines. Hospitals should pay careful consideration to the following two cases. Serial Whistleblower Seeks to Overturn Ruling Involving Alleged Cash-Flow Subsidies under... READ MORE

S&P Global Ratings, Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service recently released their Nonprofit Healthcare 2019 Outlooks, which are largely consistent with 2018, despite changes in the health care industry over the past year. Fitch and Moody’s issued negative outlooks for the nonprofit health care sector, while S&P’s sector outlook was stable. Despite their differing... READ MORE

The Oregon State Legislature is considering a bill that bases the determination of tax-exemption for hospital property on the relationship between hospital executives’ compensation and the amount of charity care provided by the hospital. While a number of other states have passed legislation that threatens a hospital’s property tax-exempt status where a hospital fails... READ MORE

Health care providers can learn a thing or two from Starbucks. Similar to Starbucks, health care providers are creditworthy and desirable tenants and should leverage that desirability to negotiate better leases. These five strategies have helped make Starbucks a leader is the retail world, and health care providers would do well to implement the... READ MORE