The Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”), enforces the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”). This includes the requirement that Covered Entities (health care providers and health plans) have Business Associate Agreements with their “Business Associates.”
“Business Associates” are persons or entities who “create, receive, maintain or
The Supreme Court held last week that in a federal health care fraud prosecution, the Sixth Amendment prevents the government from obtaining a pretrial freeze of assets that were untainted by the alleged crime and that defendant sought to use to pay her lawyer.
In Luis v. United States, the government alleged that the
In our previous post [found here], we explained that, under the Privacy Rule, HIPAA covered entities (health care providers and health plans) must provide individuals and their “personal representatives” with access to the individual’s protected health information. An individual’s personal representative is determined under State law. In this post, we will define
Under the Privacy Rule, HIPAA covered entities (health care providers and health plans) are required to provide individuals, upon request, with access to their protected health information (PHI) in one or more “designated record sets” maintained by or for the covered entity.
Covered entities are also required to protect the individual’s PHI from unauthorized disclosure.
CMS has published a Proposed Rule to clarify how physicians are to bill for services furnished “incident to” the professional services of a physician.
When a medical practice bills Medicare “incident to” for NPP services (i.e. “non-physician practitioners” such as nurses or physician assistants), the bill is rendered by the physician using the physician’s NPI
Earlier this month, EDNY Judge Joanna Seybert examined the elements of Aggravated Identify Theft in an interesting context: a motion to unseal grand jury minutes in a health care fraud prosecution, United States v. Cwibeker.
Defendants were charged with billing Medicare for fictitious or non-compensable treatments of residents of assisted living facilities. Defendants would
The Second Circuit yesterday rejected a Constitutional challenge to New York’s requirement that children be vaccinated to attend public school, and upheld a school’s decision to exclude from class, during a chicken pox outbreak, students with a religious exemption to the vaccination requirement.
In Phillips v. City of New York, two Catholic parents received
On November 10, 2014, the US Department of Health and Human Services released its investigation report regarding the death of actress and comedian Joan Rivers. The report, called a “Statement of Deficiencies and Plan of Correction”, highlights numerous mistakes and violations made by Yorkville Endoscopy, the treating facility where Ms. Rivers died (Ms. Rivers
An interesting SDNY settlement agreement resolves some False Claims Act allegations, but leaves others for another day. Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNS) paid just under $35 million to the United States and New York State to settle allegations that VNS improperly billed Medicaid for 1,740 members whose needs did not qualify for a
Columbia University agreed to pay $9 million this week in settlement of a SDNY False Claims Act case alleging that it had submitted false claims in connection with federal grants funding AIDS and HIV related work. Columbia was the grant administrator on behalf of ICAP, an entity that received millions of dollars in federal grants