Not only are healthcare providers under attack in the daily battle against the coronavirus, criminal actors are quickly taking advantage of relaxed HIPAA enforcement and standards, teleworking and the general intensity of the situation to exploit patient and other confidential information ...
Although HIPAA is probably best known for its privacy and security provisions, it also affords certain essential rights to ensure that individuals have access to their medical records. Since 2019, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has stated its intent to increase enforcement of this specific right in response to a directive from HHS. There has been a gradual increase in this targeted enforcement activity until recently ...
COVID-19 is having a transformational impact on American workplaces, which has short- and long-term consequences. Waller partners Bo Campbell and Aron Karabel join this episode to address the transformation. Campbell, a leader on Waller's real estate team, discusses the impacts on commercial leasing and how the work-from-home phenomenon will impact office trends and future development projects. Here is a transcript of the conversation: Morgan Ribeiro, Host Welcome to PointByPoint ...
Earlier this month, the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG)published an advisory opinionthat permitted a pain management practice to retain the profits it received from billing for the anesthesia services that an employed CRNA provided at an ASC partially owned by the practice’s physician-owner ...
Savings and expected recoveries of $43 billion were reported by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in its Semiannual Report to Congress on December 14, 2007, for fiscal year 2007 (October 2006 – September 2007). This represents $2.18 billion in investigative recoveries, $1 ...
Today the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued an Updated Special Advisory Opinion addressing the recommended scope and frequency of exclusion checks of employees and contractors. The Advisory Opinion provides important and practical guidance to assist healthcare providers seeking to protect their businesses against the risk of employing or contracting with excluded individuals and entities ...
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a Special Fraud Alert from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) highlighting the fraud and abuse risks associated with the offer, payment, solicitation, or receipt of remuneration related to speaker programs sponsored by healthcare companies ...
Introduction On April 1, 2020 — the effective date of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) — the Department of Labor (DOL) issued “temporary regulations” to interpret and enforce the landmark legislation passed by Congress “to assist working families facing public health emergencies” arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic ...
Yesterday, July 22, 2014, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing at which the so-called corporate inversions of U.S. multinationals were a key topic. The hearing followed U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew’s July 15 letter to congressional tax writers urging immediate legislative action to stop corporate inversions of U.S. companies. Generally, a corporate inversion is a transaction in which a U.S. multinational group with a U.S. parent corporation restructures so that the U.S ...
In September, President Biden announced aggressive plans to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, taking the fight directly to the workplace and ordering mandatory vaccination or weekly testing to employers with 100 or more employees. This week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued anEmergency Temporary Standard(ETS) regarding the COVID-19 vaccination and testing requirements for employers ...
Yesterday, the Department of Labor informally notified key stakeholders that it will soon be issuing new regulations concerning COVID-19. One expectation is that the regulations will require employers to not only implement COVID-19 prevention programs but also follow CDC guidelines ...
On the heels of growing pressure and mounting criticism from Congress and labor unions that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was not doing enough to protect workers, OSHA issued new guidance expanding employers’ reporting requirements related to COVID illnesses ...
Back in mid-March, the Department of Labor (DOL) notified key stakeholders of the likelihood it would be issuing new regulations concerning COVID-19. Yesterday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the DOL issued the long-awaited Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) regarding safety requirements that healthcare employers must implement and adhere to in light of COVID-19 ...
The so-named “American Taxpayer Relief Act,” now signed by the President after having been passed in the wee hours by the Senate on January 1, 2013, and later that day by the House, may pull the country back from a self-created fiscal/political ditch, but leaves the country at the edge of a fiscal cliff with spending cut issues, debt ceiling issues and undoubtedly more tax issues to be dealt with before March 1, 2013. Overview ...
If a Code Section 501(c)(3) organization (501(c)(3)) or State or local government (collectively Exempt Entity) hospital or other facility financed with tax-exempt bonds has “too much” private business use of such facility, the bonds will lose their exempt status. Various arrangements, including partnerships or management agreements with non-exempt persons can constitute private business use ...
We are pleased to share the following summary about the Tennessee Business Relief Program. Key takeaways are: The money does not have to be paid back Revenue hopes to start disbursing in early July Unlike PPP and other relief programs, there is no application. A huge shout-out for the excellent summary to Jim Schmidt and Sharon Michie from the Tennessee’s Brewer’s Guild ...
On November 15, 2012, the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (OIG) issued a report titled “Personal Care Services: Trends, Vulnerabilities, and Recommendations for Improvement,” which included a response from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ...
As healthcare providers pursue transactions during and in the wake of COVID-19, both buyers and targets should prepare for heightened scrutiny during the due diligence process. Getting organized ahead of a sale can dramatically expedite timelines and reduce deal fatigue for all parties, particularly in light of the heavier-than-normal due diligence process as a result of the pandemic. Click here for a full PDF of this report ...
As the COVID-19 outbreak spreads and officials recommend or impose increasingly restrictive steps to mitigate the impact to public health, more companies are assessing what impact the outbreak is likely to have on their business and are considering whether that impact may necessitate furloughing workers. Following is a summary of some of the core compliance issues employers should consider as they develop contingency plans that may include furloughs ...
Welcome to PointByPoint. Conversations, interviews and legal commentary for today's business professionals. In this episode, Waller’s Mark Peters talks with employment attorney Kierstin Jodway about two of the major federal stimulus packages related to the coronavirus and what it means for businesses. Here is a transcript of the conversation: Mark Kierstin, thanks for being with us today ...
President Donald Trump announced that the federal government will halt payments known as cost share reduction (CSR) payments. The CSR payments amounted to approximately $7 billion this year, and served as a subsidy to enable lower-income Americans to afford health insurance coverage ...
Scoring a win against a pandemic of class actions, Cadence Bank defeated a putative class action that had accused the bank of indifference to the Americans with Disabilities Act at its ATMs. The Plaintiff alleged that an ATM at one branch was not accessible, as required by standards that the banking and ATM industries have endeavored to meet since they became effective on March 15, 2012 ...
On October 14, 2021, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office announced a $25 million healthcare fraud settlement against a private equity firm and former executives of the firm’s portfolio company. The settlement is significant because it is the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the country to date against a private equity firm based on the firm’s oversight of its healthcare portfolio company ...
On 12/3/13, the Tax Court decided Crescent Holdings LLC,1 which involved a $1.6 billion transaction. The Tax Court's opinion (1) underlines the fact that the exact language in an operating agreement does matter and (2) clearly demonstrates that compensatory partnership/LLC interests are technically complicated and require the active role of tax counsel. FACTS Duke Energy Corp ...
