May is National Military Appreciation Month in the U.S. and several members of Congress are trying to address a hurdle that many of our service men and women face in utilizing state-legal medical cannabis as a result of ongoing federal prohibition. First, on April 15, 2021, the Veterans Medical…
Recent conflicting court rulings from different U.S. District Courts sitting in separate federal circuits put 340B covered entities on the sidelines as the battle over the legality of policies designed to limit the scope of that program continues. The policies (“340B Policies”), implemented by drug…
In March 2021 the Microsoft threat center announced a significant cyberattack that affected certain Microsoft Exchange users with on-premises servers throughout the world. For at least two months, hackers apparently successfully exploited vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Exchange system, giving…
On December 11, 2020, we published Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: HHS Proposes Modifications to the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In it, we shared that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (“HHS”) has proposed certain modifications to the Health Insurance…
Private equity (or PE) continues to have a strong interest in physician practices, surgery centers, and other health care ventures.
What is PE? At its core, PE is an alternative investment class consisting of capital that is not listed on a public exchange. PE is comprised of funds and…
While the federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule went into effect on January 1, 2021, a similar Indiana price transparency law is also set to go in effect later this month. By March 31, 2021, all hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers (“ASCs”) must post on their website certain state specific…
The Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) is skeptical of physician speaking engagements paid by pharmaceutical and medical device companies. In a recent Special Fraud Announcement, the OIG issued warnings to physicians who are not employees of sponsoring companies and are paid to espouse the…
On January 15, 2021, HHS updated its guidance on the reporting requirements for recipients of payments under the Coronavirus Provider Relief Fund (“PRF”) that exceeded $10,000 in the aggregate. This latest notice supersedes the previous guidance communicated by the agency on November 2, 2020 and…
Athenahealth, Inc. (“Athena”), an electronic health records (“EHR”) vendor, recently paid $18.25 million to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by using extravagant gifts to persuade prospects to buy its electronic medical record system. In its Complaint, the government did not…
As we reported previously, earlier this year, the Indiana Legislature passed House Bill 1004, which created a new law affecting physician noncompete agreements and physician separations codified at Indiana Code 25-22.5-5.5 that went into effect on July 1, 2020.
The new law sets out five provisions…
As if to underscore Health and Human Services’ (“HHS”) commitment to electronic medical record interoperability and against information blocking, OCR closed out 2020 with a sweeping number of enforcement actions under its HIPAA Right of Access Initiative (“Initiative”). OCR also didn’t hesitate to…
As we previously reported, on September 14, 2020 CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced, via a tweet, that CMS was withdrawing the proposed rule titled “Medicaid Fiscal Accountability Rule” (“Proposed Rule”). While the Proposed Rule was marketed as promoting transparency of the Medicaid program,…
