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 merger guidelines will impact every health care system merger. In highly concentrated markets, a merger that eliminates a significant competitor creates significant risk that the merger may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.
The Guidelines are intended to “reflect modern market realities, advances in economics and law, and the lived experiences of a diverse array of market participants.”
We delve into how Personal Health Records (PHR) differ from Electronic Health Records, key regulations affecting PHR, and how entities handling PHR approach compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
New York businessowners and employees alike await a decision from Governor Kathy Hochul as to proposed legislation, which has passed in both the New York State Senate and General Assembly, that would ban most non-competition covenants in the state.
In its complaint, the FTC alleges that USAP and Welsh Carson carried out a three-part plan to consolidate and monopolize the anesthesiology market in Texas.
A recently decided case out of Connecticut provides a useful examination of how antitrust standing issues may be analyzed in cases involving commercially insured patients directly suing a health care system alleging economic harm.
The OIG recently ruled that a proposed arrangement offering that required additional devices billed to federal health care programs would violate the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and the Beneficiary Inducements Civil Monetary Penalties Law.
The OIG recently considered the question whether an employed physician can be paid bonus compensation relating to procedures performed by the physician without violating the federal Anti-Kickback Statute.
With the fact that the constitutional challenges to its structure/processes would now be adjudicated by a district court, the FTC announced it was dropping its case.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied the request of qui tam relators that it review the Sixth Circuit’s decision in a recent case resulting in an unregistered meaning for both Anti-kickback Statue and False Claims Act.
The District Court for the District of Louisiana recently issued an order granting motions for summary judgment in favor of a notable hospital merger, holding that Louisiana’s issuance of a COPA constituted state action.
The False Claims Act’s materiality requirement as articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Universal Health Servs., Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, 579 U.S. 176 was again front and center in a case decided by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
The FTC filed suit alleging that U.S. Anesthesia Partners, Inc. and the private equity firms, creating USAP, executed a multi-year anticompetitive scheme to consolidate anesthesiology practices in Texas to drive up prices in order to boost their own profits.
The OIG opinion is significant in that it again illustrates how the OIG may treat business arrangements with characteristics of a contractual joint venture as prohibited arrangements.
This post provides additional detail as to how some of the 13 specific guidelines in the Proposed Guidelines are likely to be applied by the Agencies, especially as they are likely to impact mergers involving health care systems.