The CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization Rules
Podcast — Drug Pricing: How Are Payers Responding to the IRA?
Findings from Gibbins’ Annual Healthcare Bankruptcy Report
A Fond Farewell: Musings on the End of the Medicare Advantage Hospice Carve-In Demonstration
Video: Braidwood v. Becerra – Challenging the Affordable Care Act’s Preventive Services Coverage Provision – Thought Leaders in Health Law
Hospice and Home Health Survey Perspectives: A Conversation with Kim Skehan, VP of Accreditation at CHAP
Transparency and the Open Payments Program
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Video Podcast | Episode 173: Improving rural health care with Dr. Kevin Bennett, the Director of the Research Center for Transforming Health and the
Counsel That Cares - The Private Payer's Perspective on Value-Based Care
Podcast: Health Equity – Behind the Buzzwords – Diagnosing Health Care
A Very “Special” Episode: Amid Controversy, CMS Launches the Hospice Special Focus Program
Grace from CMS: Unexpected Good News on HIS and CAHPS Appeals
This Bandwagon Has a Broken Wheel: OIG Joins the Inconsistent Approach to Hospice GIP Claims
Behind the Curtain: Enhanced Provider Enrollment Oversight
Survey Woes: CMS Ramps Up Hospice Survey Program and Consequences
Inflation Reduction Act’s Drug Price Negotiation Provisions – What Now? – Diagnosing Health Care Podcast
A Glimpse Into the Other Side: Understanding the Perspective of Government Enforcers
I Understood There Would Be No Math: Audits, Extrapolations, and a New Set of Rules
Podcast: Inflation Reduction Act’s Drug Price Negotiation Provisions – What’s Next? - Diagnosing Health Care
Quick Takeaways From the 2024 Proposed Hospice Wage Index Rule
On Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a record $15 million settlement to resolve claims that Baylor St. Lukes Medical Center, Baylor College of Medicine, and Surgical Associates of Texas were billing Medicare...more
Like most industries, the health care sector is grappling with the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) and what AI means for the future. At the same time, many health care companies already have integrated algorithms and AI...more
Designed for busy in-house counsel and compliance professionals, this newsletter seeks to bring you up to speed on key federal and state False Claims Act (FCA) developments, with links to primary resources. Each quarter, we...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) released its annual summary of False Claims Act (FCA) recoveries for the prior fiscal year, and the data points to a number of notable trends. Although DOJ brought in the second-highest...more
When healthcare providers and other government contractors are subject to scrutiny for bills submitted to the government, it is often the result of a whistleblower complaint filed under the qui tam provisions of the False...more
A few weeks ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit answered a critical inquiry in the False Claims Act (“FCA”) context: does a defendant violate the FCA when it’s reading of the regulation is objectionably...more
Each year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) recovers millions of dollars through False Claims Act (FCA) settlements, and 2021 was no exception. Some of the most sizeable or otherwise noteworthy settlements from 2021 were with...more
On June 29, 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a settlement with California skilled nursing facility operator Plum Healthcare Group LLC and facility Azalea Holdings LLC dba McKinley Park Care Center (Plum) to...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently filed suit against Anthem, Inc. (Anthem) alleging that the Medicare Advantage Organization (MAO) violated the False Claims Act (FCA) when it knowingly failed to delete inaccurate...more
On November 5, 2019, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled on a motion to dismiss a False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam suit filed by the United States Department of Justice, long after it...more
On August 20, 2019, the United States exercised its authority under the False Claims Act (FCA) to seek dismissal of a relator’s qui tam suit because of the defendant’s burdensome discovery demands, in Polansky v. Executive...more
Introduction - In this first installment of the Health Care Enforcement Quarterly Roundup for 2019, we continue to monitor trends we identified in 2018 and introduce new enforcement efforts that are expected to persist in...more
On December 11, 2018, the United States announced that it has elected to intervene in a False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit filed against Sutter Health and its affiliated entity Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) alleging that...more
Since early 2018, federal health care regulators and enforcers have seemingly sung a new tune. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS’) walls bear posters inscribed with the phrase “Patients Over Paperwork.” The...more
A LOOK BACK... A LOOK AHEAD - While the uncertainty associated with legislative efforts to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) dominated most of the headlines for the healthcare industry last year,...more
In January 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued two memoranda that, taken together, may usher in a new era of False Claims Act (FCA) enforcement in the health care industry. The first memorandum, dated January 10,...more
False Claims Act cases often turn into battles of the experts. But only rarely does that battle turn into a rout. It did last week in a case out of the Eastern District of Virginia, United States ex rel. Ribik v. HCR...more
• How have appellate courts applied the Supreme Court’s ruling in Escobar? • If the government is aware of the relator’s allegation, but does not undertake any administrative action to address the defendant’s alleged...more
OIG Advisory Opinions - Manufacturer's Free Replacement of Spoiled Pharmaceutical Products Authorized - On Aug. 25, 2017, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG)...more
Although the sufficiency of medical records documentation supporting beneficiary diagnoses for Medicare Advantage (MA) risk adjustment has been on the OIG’s work plan since 2013, the Department of Justice has upped the ante...more
The DOJ’s recent complaint-in-intervention in US ex rel. Poehling v. United Health Group — one of two qui tam cases against United Health currently pending in the Central District of California — emphasizes the government’s...more
The government continues to seek ways to rein in healthcare costs. Now it has set its sights on the Medicare Advantage Program. Medicare Advantage Plans, sometimes called “Part C” or “MA Plans,” are offered by private...more
Recent activities of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and Qui Tam whistleblowers reveal that Medicare Advantage Plans remain at the forefront of investigations for violations of the federal False Claim Act (“FCA”) for...more
As reported in earlier blogs, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) has been actively looking into potential abuses by Medicare Advantage (MA) Organizations as to allegedly improper risk adjustment claims submissions and...more
Spotlight on the False Claims Act - Why it matters: This month, we review a recent Ninth Circuit case that allowed a qui tam relator’s action against various Medicare Advantage organizations to proceed, holding that the...more