2012

The New York State Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (“OMIG”) recently released its Compliance Program Guidance for General Hospitals.   While the OMIG had previously released a Compliance Program Assessment Tool, the new Guidance document provides a far greater level of detail as to the expectations of a hospital’s compliance program.

New York State

Peter A. Mahler, author of our sister blog New York Business Divorce, posted an excellent analysis of a recent case involving a shareholder dispute among members of an anesthesia group.

Key pieces of advice from Mahler:

  • Draft clear termination and exit provisions in shareholder and employment agreements;
  • Arbitration clauses can produce quicker results

Several health care industry companies, including Medicis, ArthroCare and Amedisys, reported in their 2012 first quarter reports that they were under Department of Justice investigations and had received civil investigative demands from the government.

Civil investigative demands, referred to as CIDs, are a particularly powerful pre-lawsuit administrative tool for federal investigations.  Using CIDs, the government

The recent decision in United States ex. rel. Drakeford v. Tuomey Healthcare Sys. Inc., No. 10-1819 (4th Cir. Mar. 30, 2012) provides a sobering reminder that hospital-physician contracts should be drafted carefully in order to avoid containing any provisions that could inadvertently result in Stark law liability.

Subject to certain limited exceptions, the federal

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York recently announced the settlement of a health care False Claims Act case against Beth Israel Medical Center for fraudulently inflating its fees for services provided to Medicare patients in order to obtain larger “outlier payments.”  Beth Israel agreed to pay over $13 million to

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”) imposed an obligation upon Medicare providers, including physicians, hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies, to report and return any overpayments they receive within 60 days of identification of the overpayment.  Failure to do so could result in substantial penalties to the provider under the False

In a recent Southern District of New York decision, Judge Jed S. Rakoff examined the original source exception to the False Claims Act’s (“FCA”) public disclosure bar.  In United States ex rel. Associates Against Outlier Fraud v. Huron Consulting Group, Inc., 2012 WL 506824 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 16, 2012), the relator alleged that defendant Huron

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) released a final rule concerning Health Insurance Exchanges (“HIE”) on March 12, 2012.  The final rule will be published in the Federal Register on March 27, 2012.  In late March, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and