Sarah Beth S. Kuyers

Associate

[email protected]

+1.202.434.7453

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Sarah Beth’s practice involves a variety of regulatory, transactional, and enforcement defense matters for clinical laboratories, hospitals, pharmacies, insurers, and other health care clients.

Sarah Beth routinely advises clients on a wide variety of federal and state health care regulatory issues, including anti-kickback and self-referral laws, licensure and scope of practice rules, telemedicine, certificate of need applications, food and drug law, and HIPAA compliance. She also handles licensure and regulatory filings for clinical laboratories and other health care providers.

On the transactional side, Sarah Beth provides regulatory counsel for mergers and acquisitions involving pharmacies, pharmacy benefit managers, and other health care providers. She has assisted clients with due diligence, licensing, change of ownership, and contract drafting and negotiation.

Sarah Beth’s enforcement defense experience includes representing health care clients in criminal and administrative actions brought by federal and state agencies for potential violations of the federal anti-kickback statute, the Stark Law, and the False Claims Act. She has also has experience in internal investigations and compliance programs.

Sarah Beth actively participates in Mintz’s pro bono program. Currently, Sarah Beth represents children seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) Status from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The SIJ program is available for foreign children who have been abused, abandoned, and neglected and have come to the United States.

Prior to joining Mintz, Sarah Beth worked as a law clerk with the health staff of the US Senate Committee on Finance, where she researched policy, regulations, and legislation regarding commercial insurance reform, health IT, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. During law school, Sarah Beth interned with a large, nonprofit health care system and with the International Trade Administration of the US Department of Commerce.

Education

  • American University (JD, cum laude)
  • University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (BSPH, honors)

Languages

- French

Contact

Offices

Admissions

  • District of Columbia
  • Virginia

Related Practices

Related Industries

Recent Insights

Viewpoint General

Key Takeaways from CMS’s Final Rule Requiring the Disclosure of Affiliates during Provider Enrollment

September 12, 2019|Blog

Viewpoint General

OIG Reports Focus on Hospice Quality of Care

July 25, 2019|Blog

Viewpoint General

HIPAA Updates: New Guidance for Business Associates and Continued Data Breaches

June 10, 2019|Blog

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Viewpoints

Viewpoint General

Key Takeaways from CMS’s Final Rule Requiring the Disclosure of Affiliates during Provider Enrollment

September 12, 2019 | Blog | By Daryl Berke, Sarah Beth Kuyers, Karen Lovitch

The Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) recently published a final rule with comment period (the “Final Rule”) that is designed to increase CMS’s ability to identify and prevent bad actors from participating in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP. Providers and suppliers should take note because implementation will be costly and burdensome. Among other things, the Final Rule requires the disclosure of certain provider and supplier affiliations and permits CMS to revoke or deny enrollment where those affiliations pose an undue risk of fraud and abuse. The Final Rule also grants CMS several additional authorities to revoke or deny a provider’s Medicare enrollment and increases the duration of such revocations and denials. The Final Rule takes effect on November 4, 2019. Comments on the Final Rule are due by 5:00 p.m. on that same day.
Viewpoint General

OIG Reports Focus on Hospice Quality of Care

July 25, 2019 | Blog | By Sarah Beth Kuyers

Earlier this month, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (OIG) released two reports regarding its concerns and recommendations related to quality of care at hospice facilities. These reports follow a portfolio report that the OIG released last summer regarding significant vulnerabilities in the Medicare hospice benefit. In these reports, the OIG outlines several quality of care issues and recommends several ways that CMS should strengthen safeguards, all of which may further increase enforcement in an already heavily scrutinized area.
Viewpoint General

HIPAA Updates: New Guidance for Business Associates and Continued Data Breaches

June 10, 2019 | Blog | By Sarah Beth Kuyers

The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released a new guidance document regarding which HIPAA violations business associates (BAs) can and cannot be held directly liable for.  In the guidance, OCR states that BAs can be held directly liable for a list of 10 violations but notes that certain other violations, like the reasonable cost requirement for a patient’s access to their PHI, cannot be enforced directly by OCR against a BA.  The covered entity (CE) is still on the hook for violations of this type, however, so CEs should carefully review their BAAs to ensure that it covers requirements that don’t directly apply to BAs but are still enforceable against CEs.  Large data breaches also continue to dominate the press.
Viewpoint General

Maryland Legislature Passes Bill Allowing Direct Advertising of Certain Laboratory Tests

April 12, 2019 | Blog | By Sarah Beth Kuyers, Karen Lovitch

The Maryland General Assembly recently passed a bill that permits any person to directly or indirectly advertise diagnostic laboratory tests in the state, with certain limitations.  The bill currently awaits the Governor’s signature and will go into effect on October 1, 2019. Maryland law currently prohibits any marketing of laboratory tests to consumers, as well as any direct-to-consumer (“DTC”) testing without a physician’s order. 
Viewpoint General

Secretary Azar Addresses Drug Pricing and Care Coordination in AHLA Keynote

March 22, 2019 | Blog | By Lauren Moldawer, Sarah Beth Kuyers

Earlier this week, Alex Azar, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), delivered keynote remarks at AHLA’s 2019 Institute on Medicare and Medicaid Payment Issues. 

Framing his remarks around two key initiatives of the Administration, regulatory reform and affordable healthcare, Secretary Azar promised a bold and swift approach to regulatory reform over the coming years. 

Secretary Azar discussed HHS’ initiative known as the “Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care,” which we’ve previously discussed on the blog. The agency is undergoing a “comprehensive reexamination of rules that may be impeding coordinated care.”  As a “sprint,” he noted the goal is to issue rulemaking to alleviate impediments “as soon as possible.”
Viewpoint General

Latest HIPAA Breach Involves Medical Records Hack of Business Associate

March 6, 2019 | Blog | By Kristen Marotta, Sarah Beth Kuyers

AltaMed Health Services (AltaMed) and California Physicians Services (doing business as Blue Shield of California (BSC)) recently received notice from their business associate, Sharecare Health Data Services (SHDS), of a hack of SHDS’s network that stores patients’ medical records.  The hacker was able to acquire and/or access patients’ protected health information (PHI) contained in the medical records kept by SHDS on behalf of AltaMed and BSC. The breach of AltaMed’s data was discovered on June 22, 2018, and the breach for BSC was discovered a few days later on June 26, 2018. Upon investigation, however, officials determined that both breaches went undetected for over a month and actually began on May 21, 2018.
Viewpoint General

A Tale of Two False Claims Act Settlements Involving EHR Vendors

February 13, 2019 | Blog | By Sarah Beth Kuyers, 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.
Viewpoint General

45 States Now Have Biosimilar Substitution Laws

February 11, 2019 | Blog | By Sarah Beth Kuyers

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... 
Viewpoint General

HIPAA and Health Care Data Privacy - 2018 Year-in-Review

January 4, 2019 | Blog | By Sarah Beth Kuyers, Kristen Marotta

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.
Viewpoint General

Some BPCIA Clouds Begin to Clear: FDA Issues Final Plans for March 2020 “Deemed to Be a License” Provision

December 13, 2018 | Blog | By Joanne Hawana, Sarah Beth Kuyers

In his typical forceful style on December 11, 2018, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced several big pieces of policy news affecting the nascent biosimilar market. The Commissioner’s statement broadly relates to FDA’s “actions to advance the biosimilars policy framework” and is a well-articulated hodgepodge of FDA regulatory, drug pricing, industry competition, and patent thicket complaints, which Dr. Gottlieb is becoming famous for in his written and oral presentations.