Kim Brandt on the Latest Washington Healthcare News
The physician practice management (PPM) space continues to evolve in response to shifting market trends, demand for specialized care and emerging opportunities in underutilized sectors. While PPM deal volume and the creation...more
Kim Brandt, partner at Tarplin, Downs & Young has long provided the healthcare community with her expertise in all things Washington, having spent substantial time at CMS, the OIG at HHS and on Capitol Hill. She’ll be...more
Our one-day Regional Compliance Conferences provide attendees with a forum to interact with local compliance professionals, share information about your compliance successes and challenges, and create educational...more
In recent months, the Kaiser Health Network (part of the Kaiser Family Foundation) has issued three reports scrutinizing the orthopedic industry and its practices. Each report articulates the stakeholder group’s concerns over...more
Report on Medicare Compliance Volume 29, no. 32 (September 14, 2020) - In an audit of 100 outlier payments, the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) said Baylor Scott & White – College Station, a hospital in Texas, didn’t...more
On July 29, 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the FY 2020 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) proposed rule [CMS-1715-P] (Proposed Rule). A link to the full rule is available here....more
In a complaint filed on July 22, 2019, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (DOJ) intervened in a qui tam False Claims Act (FCA) suit against Life Spine Inc. (Life Spine), and senior executives of...more
OIG maintains a list of all currently excluded individuals and entities called the "List of Excluded Individuals/Entities," or LEIE. Covered entities that hire – or continue to employ or work with – an individual or entity on...more
For years, doctors’ and hospitals’ medical bills have been slashed by No-Fault insurers using the insurers’ own de facto medical-provider fee schedules - How do doctors get paid by insurance companies under Michigan...more
• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published the Calendar Year (CY) 2019 Final Rule for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS), which includes provisions related to Medicare physician payments as well...more
On April 23, 2018, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation issued a Request for Information (the RFI) on a direct provider contracting model for primary care. The RFI seeks input on how direct provider contracting...more
On April 5, 2018, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced its findings that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) paid practitioners for telehealth services that did not meet Medicare requirements....more
California’s Medicaid agency has posted draft language of a new state plan amendment (SPA) that would make major changes to federally qualified health center (FQHC) and Rural Health Clinic (RHC) reimbursement. Public comments...more
• Congress amended current law to prevent CMS from applying the “MIPS” payment adjustment to separately billed items like drugs and biologics, which will drastically reduce the total amount of payment adjustments to clinical...more
A recently finalized New Jersey rule imposes new limits on prescriber acceptance of gifts and compensation from pharmaceutical manufacturers and their agents, and will likely have a significant impact on many prescriber...more
The Maryland Medicaid telehealth landscape saw some expansion in late 2017. The growth may not go as far as stakeholders desire, but it is movement nonetheless....more
The New Jersey Attorney General plans to finalize new limits on payments and other benefits that New Jersey licensed prescribers may accept from pharmaceutical manufacturers, although the expected final rule is less...more
An August 14 meta-analysis of payment reform evaluations by Len Nichols and others offers health care investors a sobering appraisal of the success to-date of a range of payment reforms initiated by the Centers for Medicare &...more
Although the sufficiency of medical records documentation supporting beneficiary diagnoses for Medicare Advantage (MA) risk adjustment has been on the OIG’s work plan since 2013, the Department of Justice has upped the ante...more
We are pleased to present our annual review of developments in the field of health law. The year was marked by key changes in False Claims Act jurisprudence and Medicare payment policy. 2016 also brought with it focused...more
Furthering the agency’s stated intention to pay for value over volume, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued a proposed rule representing the first expansion of mandatory hospital-centric bundled...more
As part of the CY 2017 proposed Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System rules (OPPS) the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the long awaited proposed payment changes for items and services...more
In Depth - On April 27, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) unveiled the much-anticipated (and, for some, feared) proposal to implement the physician payment reforms required under the Medicare Access to...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released on April 27, 2016, the highly anticipated proposed rule to implement major Medicare physician payment reform provisions included in the Medicare Access and CHIP...more
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), on March 21, 2016, issued a final rule to apply Medicare payment methodologies to all physician and other health professional...more