The medical industry is undergoing major changes and the number of small physician groups joining larger hospital systems has increased in recent years. There are many benefits to merging your medical practice with a larger system but there are many […]
Last month the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had reached a $24.5million settlement with several Alabama-based medical practices following a lawsuit that alleged the practices violated the False Claims Act. The settlement is another example of why all medical […]
We recently wrote about what types of third parties are considered “Business Associates” and we mentioned that, in short, a “Business Associate is any individual or company that ‘performs, or assists in the performance of’ any function or activity on […]
In June 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly referred to as Obamacare). That holding paved the way for the ACA to move forward but […]
A jury recently reached a $14.75 Million verdict in Florida in a case between twoclinical laboratory companies arguing over sales and marketing practices that were potential violations of various state and federal laws. The lessons that follow are important for […]
Entities covered under the HIPAA Privacy Rules face very high penalties for failing to properly handle protected health information (PHI) as one Indiana non-profit health care system learned to the tune of $800,000. If you handle PHI there is a […]
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General(OIG) recently issued a Special Fraud Alert based on a concern that laboratory payments to referring physicians and physician group practices for blood specimen collection, processing, and packaging, and […]
In July 2013 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)issued a final regulation allowing 340B covered entities (public safety-net health providers) to purchase orphan drugs at the discounted 340B prices even when the drugs aren’t used to treat […]