The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced an expansion of its accelerated and advance payment program for certain Medicare participating providers and suppliers to ensure they have the financial resources they need during the COVID-19 crisis. Under this program, CMS will provide an approved applicant with up to 100% of the applicant’s Medicare payment amount for a 3-month period (this amount is even more for certain hospitals). The payments can be requested by hospitals, doctors, DME suppliers and other Medicare Part A and Part B providers and suppliers.
To ...
As you may have heard, the U.S. Senate has passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”), designed to respond to the economic fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak. The House passed the bill on Friday, March 27th, with President Trump expected to sign it very shortly. Senator Schumer has described the CARES Act as a “Marshall Plan” for the country’s healthcare system. Small businesses, including healthcare practices, can take advantage of the Act’s Paycheck Protection Program (the “Program”).
The Act allocates $349 billion for small ...
Our firm is committed to monitoring Virginia’s response to the continued spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and how our healthcare clients will be affected. We are keeping abreast of any official declarations and guidance issued by the Officer of the Governor, the Attorney General’s Office, the Virginia Department of Health, the Virginia Department of Epidemiology, and the federal government. As you are aware, this is a constantly evolving situation and new information is being released and published on an ongoing basis.
In the meantime, we wanted to alert you to where ...
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is ramping up enforcement when it comes to the security of protected health information (PHI) on portable devices, including laptops, cellphones, tablets, thumb drives, etc. With an increase in portable device use by physician practices and other healthcare providers, it is now more important than ever to ensure that patient health information is protected and secure. Recently, the HHS Office for Civil Rights reached a $2.5 million settlement with CardioNet, Inc. after an employees laptop, containing PHI for nearly 1400 ...
As we all know, physicians bear the responsibility of protecting patients from threats that can stem from the storage and use of patients protected health information. Far too frequently a laptop is stolen from a car or a phone is misplaced.
These unfortunate events can have grave consequences for everyone involved if the devices contain protected health information. Not only is a patients private, personal information at risk of disclosure, but the covered entity or business associate whose property was stolen or misplaced can face liability and monetary fines under the Health ...
On June 9, 2015, the Office of Inspector General ("OIG"), within the United States Department of Health and Human Services, released a Fraud Alert regarding physician compensation arrangements, with a specific focus on payments made to physicians under medical directorship agreements. The fraud alert warns physicians of how a compensation arrangement may violate the federal anti-kickback statute ("AKS") even if only one purpose of the arrangement is to compensate a physician for his or her past or future referrals of Federal health care business. The Fraud Alert describes how ...
As doctors, you are heroes. You are noble protectors who always work for the good of your patients. You protect our health, but also our privacy. In fact, one of the most significant facets of the physician/patient relationship is trust, which is largely based on confidentiality.
Naturally, then, one of the most difficult tasks you might confront in your profession is to have to tell a patient that there has been a breach of her private health information. That undertaking becomes even more daunting when you are made to consider the legal ramifications of the breach. Not only must you ...
