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Regulators Look to Increase Interoperability and Patient Access to Health Data
February 14, 2019 | Blog
Federal regulators are flexing their regulatory muscle to accelerate a long-desired but often elusive goal: the interoperability of health information technology (health IT) systems. Interoperability refers to the ability of different health IT systems, including electronic health record (EHR) systems, to meaningfully communicate with one another.
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A Tale of Two False Claims Act Settlements Involving EHR Vendors
February 13, 2019 | Blog | By Karen Lovitch
Last week the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a $57 million settlement with electronic health record (EHR) software vendor Greenway Health LLC (Greenway). According to DOJ, Greenway violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by fraudulently obtaining certification of its software and misrepresenting its software’s capabilities to customers, thereby causing its customers to submit false attestations of “meaningful use” of EHR technology when seeking to qualify for incentive payments available through the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Program. The complaint also alleged that Greenway illegally paid kickbacks to customer in exchange for recommendations to prospective new customers.
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As CMS Lifts HHA Medicare Provider Enrollment Moratorium, States Continue to Limit HHA Licenses
February 12, 2019 | Blog | By Lauren Moldawer
As of January 30, 2019, CMS lifted its temporary provider enrollment moratoria for home health agencies in Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Texas. The Enrollment Moratorium had prevented new home health agencies in these states from enrolling in Medicare and Medicaid.
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45 States Now Have Biosimilar Substitution Laws
February 11, 2019 | Blog
Forty-five states and Puerto Rico have now enacted laws that permit or require pharmacists to dispense an interchangeable biological product in certain situations. The remaining states that have not yet passed legislation on the topic are: Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and the District of Columbia. We have been tracking and summarizing these laws over the past three years, and you can find our updated chart...
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How to Safely and Productively Promote an FDA-Regulated Medical Product
February 8, 2019 | Blog
On January 9, 2019, AdvaMed announced revisions to its Code of Ethics. As any medical product business knows, compliance with the AdvaMed Code of Ethics (the “Code”) is essential. While the Code is voluntary, many states require medical product manufacturers and companies to adopt compliance programs consistent with the Code. The amendments will be effective January 1, 2020.
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Save the Date! Mintz Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Industry Summit on May 2, 2019
February 8, 2019 | Blog
Mintz/ML Strategies’ 4th Annual Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Industry Summit has been scheduled for Thursday, May 2, 2019 – mark your calendars! People from across the industry will gather for one day to share insights about issues that the players in this complex marketplace are tackling.
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FCA Defendant Petitions Supreme Court, Argues Statute is Unconstitutional
February 7, 2019 | Blog | By Samantha Kingsbury
As many of our readers know, we have been closely following the Polukoff False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam case, which is based on allegations that certain heart procedures performed by a cardiologist were not medically necessary. The latest development in this case came a few weeks ago, when defendants Intermountain Health Care, Inc. and IHC Health Services, Inc. d/b/a Intermountain Medical Center (Intermountain) filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari with the United States Supreme Court. The Petition raised two issues: (1) whether a court may create an exception to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)’s particularity requirement when the plaintiff claims that only the defendant possesses the information needed to satisfy that requirement; and (2) whether the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions violate the Appointments Clause of Article II of the Constitution.
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OIG Advisory Opinion Allows Smartphone Loan for Needy Patients Taking Digital Drug
February 6, 2019 | Blog | By Karen Lovitch
Last week, the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services (OIG) issued a favorable Advisory Opinion regarding a proposal by a pharmaceutical manufacturer (Manufacturer) to loan a limited-use smartphone to financially needy patients taking the digital version of an antipsychotic drug. The OIG concluded that the arrangement would not constitute grounds for the imposition of civil monetary penalties (CMPs) under the prohibition on beneficiary inducement (the “Beneficiary Inducement CMP”) or administrative sanctions under the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS).
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CMS Proposes Changes to Medicare Advantage Program for CY 2020
February 6, 2019 | Blog | By Xavier Hardy, Bridgette Keller
CMS recently proposed several important changes for the Medicare Advantage (MA) program that relate to payment, benefit design, and new actions to combat the opioid crisis. Here, we take a look at the proposed changes to risk adjustment payments, supplemental benefits, and a value-based insurance design model; all working toward CMS’s goal of maximizing coverage and competition. In a prior post we discussed CMS’s Part D Payment Modernization Model and stay tuned for our upcoming discussion of CMS’s next steps to combat opioid misuse.
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Update on Azar v. Allina Health Services: Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument on When CMS Must Use Formal Rulemaking
February 4, 2019 | Blog | By Laurence Freedman, Daryl Berke
On January 15, 2019, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Azar v. Allina Health Services, a prominent case involving a challenge by hospitals over when Medicare’s instructions to its contractors impact a “substantive legal standard” and thus must be issued through formal rulemaking. As discussed in our prior post, the Court is reviewing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision that threw out a Medicare rate calculation methodology for Disproportionate Share Payments (DSH) to hospitals adopted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for its failure to undergo notice and comment rulemaking. During oral arguments, the Court grappled with a broader question: what is the legal standard for when HHS must use formal rulemaking and not “interpretative” instructions to its contractors in the administration of the Medicare program?
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Part D Payment Modernization Model Aimed at Reducing Medicare's Catastrophic Phase Spending
January 28, 2019 | Blog | By Rachel Yount
On January 18, 2019, CMS announced the Part D Payment Modernization Model, aimed at incentivizing Part D sponsors to reduce catastrophic phase federal reinsurance subsidy spending. The model, which will begin January 2020, is a voluntary, five-year model open to eligible standalone Prescription Drug Plans (PDPs) and Medicare Advantage-Prescription Drug Plans (MA-PDs) that are approved to participate.
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CMS Addresses Drug Manufacturer Coupons in Proposed 2020 Payment Notice
January 25, 2019 | Blog | By Rachel Yount
On January 24, 2019, CMS published its annual Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2020 ("Proposed 2020 Payment Notice") proposing parameters applicable to qualified health plans (QHPs) on the Exchanges for plan years beginning January 1, 2020. Among several other proposals, CMS is proposing that issuers be permitted to exclude drug manufacturer coupons for prescription brand drugs that have a generic equivalent from counting toward patients’ annual limit on cost-sharing.
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OIG Advisory Opinion Allows Routine Waiver of Federal Cost-Sharing Obligations
January 18, 2019 | Blog | By Karen Lovitch , Cassandra Paolillo
In an Advisory Opinion posted earlier this week, the OIG gave the green light to a charitable pediatric clinic’s routine waiver of patient cost-sharing amounts on the basis. The OIG’s analysis hinged on several factors that, taken together, led the OIG to refrain from exercising its enforcement discretion.
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In Case You Missed It: A List of Our Health Care Year in Review Posts
January 17, 2019 | Blog
Over the last few weeks, we published a number of posts examining important developments and trends in 2018 as well as what we expect to see in 2019. Our posts cover a range of topics, including enforcement and litigation, HIPAA and the FDA. In case you missed one, below are links to all of our Year In Review posts.
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Health Care Enforcement Year in Review and 2019 Outlook: Civil Litigation Developments and Settlements
January 11, 2019 | Blog | By Brian Dunphy, Laurence Freedman, Karen Lovitch
As in years past, the False Claims Act (FCA) remained a powerful health care enforcement tool in 2018, and FCA investigations and litigation persisted, fueled mainly by hundreds of lawsuits filed annually by relators, including 645 new qui tam actions initiated in FY 2018.
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Health Care Enforcement Year in Review & 2019 Outlook: New DOJ Policies Applicable to FCA Litigation
January 10, 2019 | Blog | By Brian Dunphy, Laurence Freedman
Last year, as we previously discussed, there were two significant Department of Justice (DOJ) policy developments that are applicable to False Claims Act (FCA) litigation: (1) the “Granston Memo” (issued by DOJ Civil Fraud Director Michael Granston), which set forth direction for DOJ’s exercise of its authority to dismiss declined qui tam FCA cases; and (2) the “Brand Memo” (issued by Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand), which instructed DOJ’s FCA litigators not to use any sub-regulatory guidance to create legal obligations.
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Health Care Enforcement Year in Review & 2019 Outlook: Criminal Enforcement Trends
January 9, 2019 | Blog | By Eoin Beirne
Criminal healthcare enforcement in 2018 once again focused heavily on opioids, targeting manufacturers, prescribers, dispensers and those who contribute to the addiction epidemic, and on prosecution of individuals for a variety of offenses. In addition, the DOJ announced some expected policy changes related to the way it investigates and prosecutes corporations as well as the restrictions placed on corporations after resolution of government charges. We will address each of these issues in this post and will attempt to forecast what we expect to occur in the coming year.
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Health Care Enforcement Year in Review & 2019 Outlook: Analysis of Health Care FCA Litigation Trends
January 8, 2019 | Blog | By Kevin McGinty
In 2018, the volume of False Claims Act (FCA) litigation remained high, and health care-related qui tam (i.e., whistleblower) cases continued to lead the way. Using data compiled in the Mintz Health Care Qui Tam Database (which is described further below), this post analyzes the trends in cases unsealed in 2018. To evaluate long-term trends, we examined the annual Department of Justice (DOJ) compilation of FCA cases. Together these data sets show that health care cases continue to make up a large majority of all whistleblower cases brought under the FCA, and almost two-thirds of those cases were brought by current or former employees, mostly against large pharmaceutical companies, physicians, and hospitals.
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DOJ Updates its Justice Manual to Include Section Limiting Use of Guidance Documents in Litigation
January 7, 2019 | Blog | By Samantha Kingsbury
Nearly one year ago, on January 25, 2018, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Regulatory Reform Task Force issued a memorandum entitled “Limiting Use of Agency Guidance Documents In Affirmative Civil Enforcement Cases.” Many refer to this memorandum as the “Brand Memo” because it was authored by Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand. The Brand Memo implemented the prohibition previously issued by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in November 2017 against, in part, DOJ using guidance documents issued by other agencies “to create binding standards by which [DOJ] will determine compliance with existing statutory or regulatory requirements” (the “Sessions Memo”).
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HIPAA and Health Care Data Privacy - 2018 Year-in-Review
January 4, 2019 | Blog
Today, we’re looking back at HIPAA and other privacy and security developments in 2018. This past year saw continued HIPAA enforcement (including the largest ever fine for a HIPAA breach), reminders from the OCR on best practices for HIPAA compliance, and updates to state and international privacy and security laws. We’ll also look ahead to 2019, which could bring several significant changes to HIPAA, such as reducing the burdens for sharing patient information in order to promote care coordination and better patient outcomes.
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