Podcast — Drug Pricing: How the Demise of Chevron Deference and Other Litigation May Impact the Pharmaceutical Industry
Podcast — Drug Pricing: How Are Payers Responding to the IRA?
Hospice Insights Podcast - A Rise in Medicare Deactivations: Tips for Avoiding This Financial Pain
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Video Podcast | Episode 187: South Carolina Hospitals and Healthcare Industry Trends with Thornton Kirby, SCHA President
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
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
Medical Device Legal News with Sam Bernstein: Episode 19
Counsel That Cares - The Private Payer's Perspective on Value-Based Care
Opting Out of Medicare: When and How to Do It
Medical Device Legal News with Sam Bernstein: Episode 11
Show Me the Money: New Study Confirms Hospice Saves Money for Medicare
An Unwanted Spotlight: DOJ Announces Hospice Fraud Is Top Priority
The Chartwell Chronicles: Medicare & Medicaid
Navigating EMTALA Rules
Heed Caution: Takeaways From the OIG's Advance Care Planning Report
Podcast: The End of the Public Health Emergency – What's to Come? – Diagnosing Health Care
Patient Steering and Charting
Telehealth Risk Report: What the Government Found
Do You Have a Backup? Building Redundancies Into Your Written Certification Process
AGG’s Government Investigations Team Insights provides periodic updates covering legal and regulatory topics. Our team, which includes former federal prosecutors, SEC enforcement attorneys, and federal agency attorneys, has...more
Family Health Centers of San Diego (Health Center) operates a federally qualified health center (FQHC) that has 49 locations throughout San Diego County, California, and provides a comprehensive range of primary and...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 30, no. 11 (March 22, 2021) - A cancer center has won its appeal of $2 million in Medicare claim denials in a case about modifier 25 and the extrapolation of an overpayment. Problems with the...more
As an attorney specializing in healthcare reimbursement, I have focused my practice on helping healthcare providers navigate the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (“CMS”) administrative appeal process. I usually get a call...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 29, no. 23 (June 22, 2020): The HHS Departmental Appeals Board (DAB) has upheld the largest stipulated penalty imposed by the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) in years. OIG fined...more
On September 10, 2019, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced new authority to revoke providers’ Medicare enrollment and any corresponding provider agreements or supplier agreements through revisions...more
On December 17, 2019, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) reintroduced legislation to address the backlog of Medicare appeals cases awaiting review before an...more
Two United States District Courts in Louisiana and Illinois issued split decisions within two weeks of each other on the dire financial issues facing providers every day under the discretionary “penal recoupment” system the...more
In a case that could impact health care bankruptcies, where jurisdiction over Medicaid and Medicare claims in bankruptcy are often disputed, the Fifth Circuit, in In re Benjamin v. U.S. Social Sec. Admin., Case No. 18-20185,...more
Last week, the 11th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment given to AseraCare in its hospice false claims case, setting up more litigation on the question whether AseraCare’s certifications were made in...more
When the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), through a Medicare contractor, conducts a post-payment audit of a provider’s Medicare reimbursements and determines that the provider may have received an...more
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) made a number of recent changes to expand the Settlement Conference Facilitation (SCF) process for providers and suppliers mired in the backlog of appeals at the...more
Medicare providers who have overpayments with pending requests for Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) hearings filed on or before March 31, 2019 may now take advantage of the renewed Settlement Conference Facilitation (SCF)...more
OIG maintains a list of all currently excluded individuals and entities called the "List of Excluded Individuals/Entities," or LEIE. Covered entities that hire – or continue to employ or work with – an individual or entity on...more
With the introduction of RACs, ZPICs, and UPICs, the administrative process for Medicare payment disputes has resulted in three to five year delays in adjudicating claims while providers are faced with almost certain...more
A Houston federal judge preliminarily enjoined the government from recouping alleged Medicare overpayments made to an ambulance service company facing bankruptcy. See Adams EMS, Inc. v. Azar, No. H-18-1443, 2018 BL 391263...more
Recent opinions by the Fifth Circuit, the Northern and Southern Districts of Texas, and the District of South Carolina offer hope to providers seeking relief from substantial monetary recoupments during the Medicare appeals...more
In a recent decision, the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, granted a health care provider a preliminary injunction to prevent the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ("CMS") from withholding Medicare payments...more
On March 27, 2018, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Family Rehabilitation, Inc. v. Alex Azar, II, Sec. U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, No. 17-11337, 2018 WL 1478052, at *1 (5th Cir. Mar. 27, 2018), reversed the...more
Medicare’s implementation of post-payment review through overly aggressive zone program integrity contractors (ZPICs) and unified program integrity contracts (UPICs), combined with an ineffective review process at the first...more
Providers and suppliers who have been assessed overpayments for Medicare services are entitled, by statute, to a stay of recoupment while the provider or supplier’s appeal is pending – but only at the first two levels of...more
In a much-anticipated decision in Family Rehab., Inc. v. Azar, Federal Judge Kinkeade enjoined the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ("CMS") from withholding Medicare payments to effectuate the recoupment of the...more
A home health agency has scored a second win in its fight to prevent CMS from withholding Medicare payments (to effectuate a recoupment of alleged overpayments), at least for the time being. We previously reported on the...more
Medicare’s implementation of post-payment review through overly aggressive private contractors, combined with an ineffective review process at the first two levels of the administrative appeal process (redetermination and...more
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on November 3, 2017 additional settlement options for providers and suppliers in an effort to improve the Medicare claims appeals process, which included (1) the Low...more