Health Law Scan

The Boston Bar Association hosted its fifth annual White Collar Crime Conference on May 2, 2024, featuring prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts (the Office) and the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General (the AG’s Office) as well as lawyers from the defense bar.

Members of our labor and employment team recently published a LawFlash discussing and analyzing the New York Health and Essential Rights Act (the HERO Act), which was signed into law on May 5, 2021 by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The HERO Act requires the New York State Department of Labor and New York State Department of Health to create industry-specific airborne infectious disease standards that must be used by all employers doing business within the State of New York.

In a recent LawFlash, our colleagues in the white collar practice discussed the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) Criminal Division’s update to its Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs guidance, which is used by its prosecutors to assess the adequacy and effectiveness of corporate compliance programs in corporate criminal resolutions.

With just days left until provider attestations are due related to acceptance of CARES Act Provider Relief Funds, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recently been updating its FAQs, providing some additional clarity, and potentially confusion, surrounding the acceptance of Relief Funds from its initial tranche $30 billion of General Distribution payments. Attestations for the first tranche of payments on April 10 are due May 25, and HHS continues to furnish guidance regarding the details of the General Distribution Relief Fund.

While US healthcare institutions are poised to respond to any outbreak of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), how should they prepare as employers for the questions and compliance challenges that arise in a public health crisis?

In this LawFlash, our white collar litigation and government investigations team unpacks the fiscal year 2019 False Claims Act (FCA) recovery statistics recently announced by the US Department of Justice.

Further strengthening incentives for organizations to self-report potential FCPA violations, the US Department of Justice continued that trend with additional updates to the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy announced on November 20.

In what has become the new “normal” in Washington, DC, these days, hospitals and their associations filed a lawsuit today against the US Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary) challenging the recent Final Rule issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on November 27, 2019, addressing hospital pricing disclosures.

The government watchdog agencies continue to focus their attention on Medicare oversight of hospice providers, with two recent reports from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) focused in large part on ways to improve hospice surveys and nursing care oversight deficiencies.

In this LawFlash, our healthcare industry team unpacks the final rule requiring hospitals to make standard charges public and the proposed transparency in coverage rule requiring group health plans and health insurance issuers to disclose negotiated rates with providers and out-of-network estimates for consumers.