On November 15, 2023, the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a $45.6 million consent judgment (Settlement) with six skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), as well as the owner of the SNFs and its management company which...more
12/13/2023
/ Anti-Kickback Statute ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Fraud and Abuse ,
Health Care Providers ,
Healthcare ,
Healthcare Fraud ,
Settlement ,
Skilled Nursing Facility ,
Statutory Violations
On March 29, 2023, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced a notable set of three settlements (collectively, the Settlement) in excess of $69 million dollars total with a...more
On March 29, 2023, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced a notable set of three settlements (collectively, the Settlement) in excess of $69 million dollars total with a...more
4/5/2023
/ Anti-Kickback Statute ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Fraud and Abuse ,
Health Care Providers ,
Healthcare ,
Healthcare Fraud ,
Physicians ,
Self-Referral ,
Self-Referral Disclosure Protocol ,
Settlement Agreements ,
Stark Law
On September 26, 2022, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a $900 million settlement with pharmaceutical company Biogen Inc., which arose from alleged violations of the federal False Claims Act (FCA) and...more
On January 14, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned a $4.348 million penalty for alleged HIPAA violations assessed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) against the University of...more
On February 27, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced an action to block a proposed transaction between Thomas Jefferson University d/b/a Jefferson Health (Jefferson) and Albert Einstein Healthcare Network...more
3/6/2020
/ Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Provisions ,
Antitrust Violations ,
Competition ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
FTC Act ,
Health Care Providers ,
Horizontal Mergers ,
Hospital Mergers ,
Hospitals ,
Merger Agreements
On January 27, 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a $145 million settlement with Practice Fusion Inc., an electronic health records (EHR) software company, that resolves parallel criminal and civil investigations...more
1/31/2020
/ Anti-Kickback Statute ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Deferred Prosecution Agreements ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
EHR ,
Electronic Medical Records ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Failure to Comply ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Fines ,
Forfeiture ,
Health Care Providers ,
Opioid ,
Patients ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
PHI ,
Prescription Drugs
On November 27, 2019 the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a $2.175 million dollar settlement with a hospital system to resolve alleged violations of HIPAA’s Breach...more
12/4/2019
/ Billing ,
Breach Notification Rule ,
Corrective Actions ,
Data Breach ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Health Care Providers ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
HIPAA Breach ,
HIPAA Privacy Rule ,
Hospitals ,
OCR ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
PHI ,
Risk Management ,
Settlement
On September 4, 2019 the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a $15.4 million settlement with pharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt ARD LLC (Mallinckrodt) to resolve alleged violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) in two...more
9/18/2019
/ Anti-Kickback Statute ,
Co-payments ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Fraud ,
Health Care Providers ,
Marketing ,
Meals-Gifts-and Entertainment Rules ,
Medicare ,
Patient Assistance Programs ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Prescription Drugs ,
Qui Tam ,
Remuneration ,
Settlement Agreements ,
Whistleblowers
In a 3-0 decision issued September 9, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a three-year-old district court ruling in United States v. AseraCare, Inc. that a Medicare claim for hospice services...more
9/17/2019
/ Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Fraudulent Charges ,
Health Care Providers ,
Healthcare Facilities ,
Hospice ,
Medicare ,
Medicare Beneficiaries ,
Objective Falsity ,
Reversal
The Wolcott school system in Wolcott, Connecticut has been recovering for four months from a ransomware attack that hit its system at the end of the school year. Last week, it was hit with a second attack. According to...more
9/13/2019
/ Consumer Privacy Rights ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Data Privacy ,
Debt Collectors ,
Digital Assets ,
Educational Institutions ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Financial Services Industry ,
Hackers ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
Healthcare ,
Medical Records ,
Municipalities ,
NIST ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Ransomware ,
TCPA
On September 9, 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it had settled its first ever HIPAA enforcement action arising from alleged violations of the individual...more
9/11/2019
/ Corrective Actions ,
Data Management ,
Electronic Medical Records ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Failure to Comply ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
HIPAA Breach ,
OCR ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
PHI ,
Regulatory Standards ,
Regulatory Violations ,
Right of Access
On June 13, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction granted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and North Dakota Attorney General (NDAG) blocking the proposed acquisition of...more
7/1/2019
/ Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Provisions ,
Appeals ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Health Care Providers ,
Health Clinics ,
Physicians ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
State Attorneys General ,
The Clayton Act
On June 5, 2019, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a global settlement with Insys Therapeutics (Insys) that preliminarily resolves criminal and civil cases against the opioid manufacturer in a number of jurisdictions....more
6/26/2019
/ Chapter 11 ,
Commercial Bankruptcy ,
Criminal Investigations ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Drug & Alcohol Abuse ,
Enforcement Actions ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Healthcare Fraud ,
Kickbacks ,
Mail Fraud ,
Manufacturers ,
Marketing ,
Opioid ,
Pain Management ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Prescription Drugs ,
Settlement Agreements
Although many thought that WannaCry was in the rear view mirror, a recent report by Artemis, based on client experience, found that health care organizations and manufacturing companies are still being hit with the ransomware...more
5/31/2019
/ Cyber Crimes ,
Cyber Insurance ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Privacy ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Hackers ,
Health Care Providers ,
HIPAA Breach ,
Malware ,
Manufacturers ,
OCR ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Ransomware ,
Robocalling ,
Telemarketing
On April 8, 2019, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDA) filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit seeking review of a decision by the Department of Health & Human Services’s (HHS)...more
Since the beginning of 2019, federal and state authorities in Connecticut have announced a number of enforcement actions targeting alleged health care fraud in the state. ...more
On February 25, 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a settlement with a urology group practice to settle allegations of False Claims Act (FCA) violations tied to the alleged submission of improperly unbundled...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced two high-dollar False Claims Act (FCA) enforcement actions involving allegedly fraudulent arrangements tied to the implementation and use of electronic health record systems...more
2/21/2019
/ Anti-Kickback Statute ,
Corporate Integrity Agreement ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
EHR ,
Electronic Health Record Incentives ,
Enforcement Actions ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Fraud and Abuse ,
Healthcare Fraud ,
Settlement Agreements ,
Stark Law ,
White Collar Crimes
On February 19, 2019, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had intervened in a False Claims Act (FCA) whistleblower suit filed against Arriva Medical LLC (Arriva) and its parent that allegedly involves the...more
According to reports, a Georgia-based physician who previously pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) received six months of probation from a Massachusetts...more
Many consumers are unaware that retailers use facial recognition technology in retail stores to monitor shoppers and prevent shoplifting. Consumers see cameras in retail stores and assume they are there to monitor for...more
10/15/2018
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
COPPA ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Collection ,
Data Privacy ,
Disability Discrimination ,
Driverless Cars ,
Drones ,
Enforcement Actions ,
EU-US Privacy Shield ,
Facial Recognition Technology ,
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
OIG ,
Online Safety for Children ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Popular ,
Regulatory Standards ,
Title III ,
Trump Administration ,
Unmanned Aircraft Systems ,
Website Accessibility ,
Website Owner Liability ,
Websites
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced two significant False Claims Act (FCA) settlements in recent days that signal continued close government scrutiny of billing, coding and referral practices at hospitals....more
8/9/2018
/ Anti-Kickback Statute ,
Coding ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
False Billing ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Health Care Providers ,
Hospitals ,
Kickbacks ,
Medicare ,
Patient Referrals ,
Stark Law
On May 16, 2018, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia announced that it had entered into the “largest hospital drug diversion civil penalty settlement in U.S. History” in the amount of $4.1 million...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ), recently intervened in a civil False Claims Act (FCA) case filed against Insys Therapeutics, Inc. (Insys) in the Central District of California that alleges FCA violations arising from the...more