In its August 2012 issue, the American Bankruptcy Institute Journal published  Medicare Issues in Bankruptcies by Ted Berkowitz and Veronique Urban of Farrell Fritz.

The takeaways:

-Health care entities contemplating a bankruptcy filing should carefully consider the effects that the filing will have on their Medicare arrangements;

-Health care debtors should be aware that any

Tragic news events on Long Island have made the public increasingly aware of the threat posed by prescription drug trafficking and abuse.  In June 2011, four people were killed by a man robbing a Medford pharmacy for prescription painkillers.  On New Year’s Eve, an ATF agent was killed trying to stop a robbery at a

The US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) recently released its HIPAA audit protocol.  Audits of HIPAA compliance were mandated by the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (“HITECH”) Act, which amended many parts of HIPAA and included breach notification requirements.

The OCR conducted a number of

The recent increase of prescription drug abuse led both chambers of the New York State Legislature to pass the Internet System for Tracking Over-Prescribing (I-STOP) Act on June 11, 2012.  The legislation seeks to tighten control over certain controlled substances in an effort to decrease criminal diversion and abuse of such prescription drugs which can

Now that the Affordable Care Act has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, the requirement to control costs is critical.  One thing we can learn from the experience of near universal coverage in Massachusetts is that providing access to more citizens without containing costs is a recipe for disaster.  In 2006 Massachusetts achieved coverage

The United States Supreme Court has upheld the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s  individual mandate not because it is as an exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause, but because the mandate is within Congress’s power to lay and collect taxes.

On Medicaid expansion, the Court ruled that the Act violates the

Physicians with a controlling interest in a New York professional corporation should be mindful of a minority shareholder’s common law right to judicial dissolution. In a recent posting on our New York Business Divorce Blog, Peter A. Mahler describes a recent ruling by Westchester County Commercial Division Justice Alan D. Scheinkman in the case

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

With a decision by the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act expected shortly, the New York Times has published a simple interactive tool examining the potential impact of the decision if the Court were to strike all, some, or none of the provisions of the law commonly knows

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