Blog - Archive for Health Care Law News

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced effective January 31, 2014, a six-month moratorium continues for new and pending applications for home health agency providers and suppliers in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties and begins in Broward County. The moratorium, invoked under the Affordable Care Act, also affects other large metropolitan cities such as Read more →

Tags : Affordable Care Act , Medicaid , Medicare

According to a recent HHS-CMS directive that went into effect on January 15, 2014, “CMS has learned from contractors that providers are abusing the program and not changing inappropriate behavior even after extensive education to address these behaviors.” Such providers have now been deemed “recalcitrant,” and the “recalcitrant” category is one into which Medicare providers Read more →

Tags : Healthcare compliance

Under a recent settlement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Affinity Health Plan, Inc., settled potential violations of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules for $1,215,780. HHS-OCR’s investigation revealed that Affinity impermissibly disclosed (without consent) the protected health information of up to 344,579 individuals when it returned multiple photocopiers to a Read more →

Tags : HIPAA compliance , United States Department of Health and Human Services

On December 26th, 2013, HHS-OCR announced a $150,000 dollar settlement with Adult & Pediatric Dermatology, P.C.(APDerm), a Concord, Massachusetts-based private practice for alleged HIPAA violations discovered during an HHS-OCR investigation following a reported breach. As background, on October 7th, 2011,APDerm notified HHS that an unencrypted USB memory drive containing protected health information (PHI) had been Read more →

Tags : HIPAA compliance

Earlier today, the OIG launched an online submission process for its voluntary Self-Disclosure Protocol. This online disclosure tool is designed to make it even easier for providers who wish to voluntarily disclose self-discovered evidence of potential fraud to OIG. According to the OIG’s associated press release, “Self-disclosure gives providers the opportunity to avoid the costs Read more →

Tags : Florida Healthcare Law , Healthcare compliance