Legal developments affecting the healthcare industry.
By Brian Balow Mobile health (mHealth) technologies continue to expand in application and implementation. Over the past decade, the breadth of these technologies has grown from the creation of healthcare-directed websites (think WebMD) to implanted medical devices that constantly transmit and receive information (sometimes on a device-to-device basis). If you are either a provider or …
Continue reading “Legal and Regulatory Landscape for Mobile Health Technologies”
By James M. Burns On January 6, two Michigan Congressmen – Representative John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Representative Dan Benishek (R-Mich.) – introduced the “Quality Health Care Coalition Act of 2015.” The bill (H.R. 105) would permit independent healthcare professionals to engage in joint negotiations with health insurers over fees and other contract terms. Currently, such …
By David J. Houston Healthcare provider institutions including hospitals, clinics, medical practices, nursing homes and home health care providers (here, “Institutions”) are occasionally called upon to balance the preferences of Consumers against the interests or possible rights of their employee Care Providers. This may occur when Consumer complaints target assigned direct Care Providers – nurses, …
By Jessica L. Russell In 2011, CMS implemented the Accountable Care Organization (“ACO”) Shared Savings Program, which aims to promote increased savings for the Medicare program, improve health care quality, and create a more efficient and effective health care delivery system. While many deemed the ACO to be the future of health care models, the …
Continue reading “Will the ACO Proposed Rule Save the Shared Savings Program?”
By Wendy Hulton Back in 2012, the Ontario Court of Appeal recognized the tort of invasion of privacy – fast forward to the recent string of privacy breaches of personal information held by health care facilities in Ontario. Along comes Hopkins v Kay, 2014 ONSC 321 (CanLII), where patients from the Peterborough Regional Health Centre …
By Keith C. Dennen A woman is seriously injured in a car accident. It is not her fault. She is taken to the emergency room where she is treated. When she is released, the hospital bills total $100,000. The woman has health insurance. The hospital submits its claim and the health insurance company pays $25,000.00 …
By Jay Hughes The Governing Board of every nonprofit health system considering a merger, change in control, sale or significant affiliation has a key role in the process and needs to be engaged throughout the planning, research, evaluation, negotiation, finalization and implementation of any transaction. Good planning at the beginning of this process will better …
By Rose Willis In a brief article published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, Sylvia Burwell, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), summarily set forth HHS’s efforts for improving the U.S. health care system. According to Ms. Burwell, these efforts will be focused on three methods: (1) using incentives …
Continue reading “HHS Aggressive Goals for Value Based Payments”
Dickinson Wright Member James Burns recently spoke to Bloomberg BNA’s Pharmaceutical Law & Industry Report for the article, “Biosimilars Policy, Accelerating Medical Breakthroughs Among Year’s Key Topics” (1/16/2015). In the article, Mr. Burns discusses some of the key antitrust issues for the upcoming year in the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Burns noted that one significant issue …
By Rose Willis The United States Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) recently issued a “Special Fraud Alert” focusing on two potentially illegal trends that it has detected in arrangements between laboratories and their referring physicians: Specimen Processing Arrangements and Registry Payments. Specimen processing arrangements were the subject of an earlier blog post, “Laboratory Payments to …
Continue reading “Arrangements between Laboratories and Referring Physicians Involving “Registries””