Health Law Observer
Timely insights and legal commentary on various health care issues and developments surrounding regulations, employment, transactions and a range of key industry matters. This blog is maintained by the Health Care Department of Stevens & Lee.
The home health industry is bracing for impact as one of the most significant changes to home health agency operations since the late 1990s is set to go into effect on or about January 1, 2020.
The Affordable Care Act not only continues for now, but shows signs of strengthening in some of its components.
Pennsylvania might just be working toward more flexibility in its licensing of micro-hospitals, albeit CMS rules and requirements will still apply.
On October 9, 2019, two agencies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services each released a set of wide-ranging and significant proposed rules.
The proposed rules follow HHS’ solicitation of information via two separate notices requesting information on potential modifications to the Stark Law exceptions to promote value-based care and reduce regulatory burdens in June 2018 and potential changes to the
A U.S. District Court vacated the portions of CMS’s Final Rule that reduced the payment rate for hospital clinic visits provided at grandfathered off-campus provider-based departments to equal the rate for similar services provided in physician office settings.
Often times, a sticking point in negotiations is how to divide voting rights, representation and other governance/decision-making responsibilities.
Most states require that physicians provide patients with access to copies of their medical records. These obligations do not disappear upon the sale of a practice.
The WTA aims at penalizing employers who do not pay their workers wages due to them and expands the time period for bringing wage claims from two to six years.
The proposed changes are intended to support better care coordination by reducing regulatory burdens to accessing and recording addiction treatment information, while maintaining privacy safeguards.
In connection with a case involving a peer review investigation of a cardiologist, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently articulated a new standard for waiver of the attorney work product doctrine.
While, generally speaking, restrictive covenants are disfavored by the courts, these types of provisions can be used to protect assets/business interests under certain circumstances.
The new category will apply to beds in observation units located outside of or adjacent to hospital emergency department beds in units that have been identified as observation units or areas of the hospital that have been designated as observation areas.
The continued use of observation status as currently structured is a confusing, time consuming and costly problem for physicians, hospitals and patients alike.
CMS recently issued new guidance on EMTALA in the form of: 1) a Medicare Learning Network MLN publication on June 27, 2019; and 2) a Memorandum to State Survey Agency Directors re: Frequently Asked Questions on EMTALA and Psychiatric Hospitals.
A CMS official, Kimberly Brandt (Principal Deputy Administrator for Operations), recently announced that the long-anticipated proposed Stark Law changes will be issued by the end of this summer.
The new final rule is the first comprehensive update to the PACE regulations since the original final rule was published in 2006. The updates under the new final rule provide operational flexibility to PACE organizations.