Health Law Advisor

Effective June 11, 2018, all Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) health care providers will be able to offer the same level of care to all beneficiaries regardless of the beneficiary’s or the health care provider’s location. In its recently released final rule, the VA stated that in December 2016 Congress mandated that the agency provide veterans with a self-scheduling, online appointment system, and that the agency meet the demands for the provision of health care services to veterans, regardless of whether such care was provided in-person or using telehealth ...

Our colleague Stuart M. Gerson at Epstein Becker Green has a post on the Health Law Advisor blog that will be of interest to our readers in the health care industry: “NIST Seeks Comments on Cybersecurity Standards For Patient Imaging Devices.”

Following is an excerpt:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST) has announced that it will be seeking industry input on developing “use cases” for its framework of cybersecurity standards related to patient imaging devices. NIST, a component of the Department of Commerce, is the agency assigned to the ...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST) has announced that it will be seeking industry input on developing “use cases” for its framework of cybersecurity standards related to patient imaging devices. NIST, a component of the Department of Commerce, is the agency assigned to the development and promulgation of policies, guidelines and regulations dealing with cybersecurity standards and best practices.  NIST claims that its cybersecurity program promotes innovation and competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and related ...

The Florida State Legislature has decided to eliminate its state licensure requirement for clinical laboratories.  Effective July 1, 2018, Florida’s recent legislation (SB 622) repeals the entirety of Chapter 483, Part I of the Florida statutes, and in doing so removes the state licensure requirement for clinical laboratories operating in-state and out-of-state.  Section 97 of SB 622, approved by the Governor on March 19, 2018, repeals the entirety of Chapter 483, Part I of the Florida statutes, and therefore, in tow, eliminates section 59A-7.024(1) and as well as all other ...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently released a report revealing that during OIG’s 2014 and 2015 audits of telehealth claims, more than half of the professional telehealth claims paid by the Medicare program did not have matching originating-site facility claims.

According to the report, Medicare telehealth spending increased from $61,302 in 2001 to $17,601,996 in 2015. Among the 191,118 Medicare paid distant-site telehealth claims (totaling $13,795,384), the OIG randomly sampled 100 of those claims and obtained ...

On April 17, the Joint Commission—a nonprofit organization that provides accreditations to health care organizations—issued a list of seven steps hospitals should take to improve safety and reduce the risk of workplace violence perpetrated by employees, patients, and visitors. While the seven steps are advisory rather than mandatory, health care organizations risk jeopardizing their accreditation status if they fail to take appropriate action in response to episodes of workplace violence.

The Joint Commission’s alert seeks to address what it characterizes as the ...

In yet another development on the fight to address the opioid epidemic, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Tuesday, April 17^th that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) will issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) amending the controlled substance quota requirements in 21 C.F.R. Part 1303. The Proposed Rule was published in the Federal Register yesterday and seeks to limit manufacturers’ annual production of opioids in certain circumstances to “strengthen controls over diversion of controlled substances” and to “make other ...

The Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) kicked off its 22^nd Annual Compliance Institute on Monday, April 16, 2018. During the opening remarks, Inspector General Daniel Levinson, of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General Office (OIG), announced the rollout of a new public resource to assist companies in ensuring compliance with Federal health care laws. The Compliance Resource Portal on the OIG’s website features:

• Toolkits
• Advisory opinions
• Provider Compliance Resource and Training
• Voluntary Compliance and Exclusions ...

Our colleagues Frank C. Morris, Jr., Jonathan K. Hoerner, and Katie Smith—attorneys at Epstein Becker Green—authored an article in Healio titled “4 Ways to Address the #MeToo Era in Health Care.”

Following is an excerpt:

The #MeToo movement has its roots in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, but its branches extend into myriad other industries including journalism, the financial sector, government, athletics, tech, academia, and even the federal judiciary. The health care sector is no exception, despite its guiding principle to “first do no ...

Our colleague Daniel J. Green at Epstein Becker Green has a post on the Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility blog that will be of interest to our readers in the health care industry: “Colorado Places New Limitation on Physician Restrictive Covenants.”

Following is an excerpt:

Earlier this month, Colorado amended its law governing physician non-compete agreements (C.R.S. § 8-2-113(3)).  Since its enactment in 1982, that statute generally has prohibited agreements restricting the rights of physicians to practice medicine, but has allowed contractual provisions ...