Health Law Alert

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) were too slow in carrying out a corrective action plan agreed to as a part of the 2013 settlement in Jimmo v. Sebelius (now captioned Jimmo v. Price).  The defendant Department of Health and Human Services had agreed to conduct a nationwide […]

The Supreme Court of Washington extended the duty “owed by medical professional[s] to a victim based on a special relationship between the mental health professional and the professional’s patient” to situations involving mental health outpatients. 1  In July of 2010, a man with severe mental illness shot and killed his […]

The Department of Justice (” DOJ”) recently published a report on its public website called “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs.”  The intention of the guidance is to provide transparency about the factors that the DOJ will consider in reviewing information from organizations involved in DOJ investigations. Organizations involved in self-disclosures […]

On March 8, 2017, Medicare hospitals and critical access hospitals (“CAH”) were required to begin giving notices to Medicare patients who remain in observation bed status for more than 24 hours.  The Notice of Observation Treatment and Implication for Care Eligibility Act (NOTICE Act) was adopted in August 2015, establishing the Medicare […]

On December 31, 2016, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor granted the plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunction in their challenge to the definition of “sex” under the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Section 1557 final regulations. The practical effect of Judge O’Connor’s ruling is that any current steps that covered […]