PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - SECURE 2.0 Act - More Relief for Plan Administrators
Recent Tenth Circuit Decision in John Q Hammons Fall Following SCOTUS’ Decision in Siegel v. Fitzgerald Could Result in Significant Refunds for Certain Chapter 11 Debtors
Nuts and Bolts of a Repayment Investigation: Keys to Conducting Investigations Under the 60-Day Repayment Rule
Hospice Audit Series: The Latest Developments and Strategies for Success in the Ever-changing Audit Landscape
Stakeholders are continuing to analyze the implications of the mammoth proposed rule on “Medicare and Medicaid Programs: [Calendar Year (CY)] 2025 Payment Policies under the Physician Fee Schedule and Other Changes to Part B...more
Gentiva, the renamed former Kindred at Home, agreed to pay $19.4 million to resolve claims that its predecessor company, Kindred at Home and related companies, violated the False Claims Act by retaining overpayments for...more
Hospitals and other providers should brace for recoupment of possibly hundreds of millions of dollars they were reportedly overpaid for services provided under the COVID-19 uninsured program (UIP) in the wake of new audit...more
Report on Medicare Compliance Volume 32, no 25 (July 2023) The former chief hospital executive of Bayonne Medical Center (BMC) in New Jersey has filed a False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit alleging the hospital and two others...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a rule late last year that would impose standards on healthcare providers and suppliers to report and return overpayments from Medicare that mirror aspects of the...more
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed a new amendment that could significantly modify the standard governing identification of overpayments by providers....more
On December 27, 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a proposed rule (Proposed Rule) which proposes certain policy and technical changes to Medicare regulations, including a notable change to the...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 30, no. 32 (September 13, 2021) - John Peter Smith (JPS) Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, agreed to pay $3.3 million to settle false claims allegations in a case with a hot risk area, a...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 30, no. 28 (August 2, 2021) - When a hospital realized it had been billing for annual wellness visits without documentation of opioid and substance use screening, it wasn’t a heavy lift to...more
On June 29, 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a settlement with California skilled nursing facility operator Plum Healthcare Group LLC and facility Azalea Holdings LLC dba McKinley Park Care Center (Plum) to...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 30, no. 11 (March 22, 2021) - A cancer center has won its appeal of $2 million in Medicare claim denials in a case about modifier 25 and the extrapolation of an overpayment. Problems with the...more
A common feature of False Claims Act (FCA) litigation is the pursuit of liability under the FCA’s so-called “reverse” false claims provision, 31 U.S.C. § 3729(a)(1)(G). Reverse false claims liability applies when a person or...more
In this installment of the Healthcare Enforcement Quarterly Roundup we cover several topics that have persisted over the past few years and identify new issues that will shape the scope of enforcement efforts in 2020. In this...more
The year 2019 was another active year in False Claims Act (FCA) investigations and litigation. Although the year lacked a singular blockbuster case, there were decisions of particular note. The Supreme Court clarified the...more
On October 31, 2019, the Office of General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an important memo from Kelly M. Cleary, CMS Chief Legal Officer, and Brenna E. Jenny, Deputy General...more
Healthcare systems, hospital networks, and other healthcare providers regularly face challenges that may require an internal investigation to determine the root cause of an issue in order to evaluate how best to remediate and...more
• Reasonable disagreement among clinicians, by itself, does not result in a false claim. • Clinical judgment must be objectively false to constitute an FCA violation. • A clinical judgment may only be objectively false...more
The Affordable Care Act requires any person who has received an overpayment from certain defined government health programs to report and return the overpayment within 60 days after the overpayment is identified. If an...more
On December 11, 2018, the United States announced that it has elected to intervene in a False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit filed against Sutter Health and its affiliated entity Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) alleging that...more
In what has become widely known as the “60-day rule,” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires that Medicare and Medicaid overpayments be reported and returned within the later of the date which is 60 days after the date on...more
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handed down a major victory to Medicare Advantage issuers on September 7, 2018, vacating a 2014 CMS regulation relating to Medicare Advantage overpayments. ...more
In recent years, many Medicare providers who have received significant overpayment determinations from Medicare contractors have gone out of business while waiting to be heard before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) for a...more
We expect 2018 to be another year of rapid change within the health care industry. In this episode, Mary Beth Johnston highlights some of the key topics that the health care practice group will monitor in the coming year,...more
For years, CMS has had the authority to refuse to enroll new Medicare providers if they or their owners have an unpaid Medicare overpayment, but CMS was not exercising this authority. Now, it appears that CMS is going to...more
A recently unsealed qui tam action further demonstrates the growing focus on the propriety of incentive payments made under Medicare and Medicaid's Electronic Health Records (EHR) Incentive Programs. Health care providers...more