Health Law Advisor

By Stuart M. Gerson

By now, every American who pays any attention to the news is aware that the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld essentially all of the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act. We have posted a copy of the lengthy opinion, concurrence, and dissent on our website. For now, we should be focusing on what the case of National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius actually will cause to occur.

Read the full alert here

by Stuart M. Gerson

By now, every American who pays any attention to the news is aware that the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld essentially all of the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act. We have posted a copy of the lengthy opinion, concurrence, and dissent on our website. For now, we should be focusing on what the case of National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius actually will cause to occur.

Read the full alert here

Every hospital merger has three critical components that board members and senior management need to consider, and which can provide a great analytic framework within which to evaluate options early in the process of consider a transaction. By no means are these three the most important in every transaction, but every hospital merger I've worked on required careful attention to, and a very clear understanding of, these components.

1.         Structure:  Transaction structure can seem a bit technical and legalistic, but understanding transaction structure is key to understanding core ...

by Jay Gerzog, Dale Van Demark, Tamar Rosenberg, and Dawn Welch

Is it possible that the U.S. Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) knows something we do not about the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision on PPACA?

Probably not, but that has not stopped the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) from issuing proposed regulations on June 26, 2012, with respect to three of the four new requirements for tax exemption of hospitals imposed by PPACA.

With the adoption of PPACA, Congress took its first concrete step toward toughening the standard for tax exemption in decades ...

Is Skype HIPAA-compliant? This is probably the question I get asked the most. For the sake of this post, I am using the term Skype to include Skype and similar free web-based communication platforms relying on proprietary voice over Internet technology.

As with so many things, the answer is complicated. But the question itself is misleading. Many vendors and manufacturers market their technology and products using terms such as “HIPAA compliant.”

However, products or technology cannot themselves be “HIPAA-compliant.” Hospitals, providers, and other covered entities ...

Written by: Eric J. Conn and Alexis M. Downs

This week, Washington Legal Foundation published an article regarding OSHA’s New Enterprise-Wide Approach to Enforcement, authored by EBG attorneys Eric J. Conn and Alexis M. Downs. The article expands on a February 2012 post entitled “Enterprise Enforcement: OSHA’s Attack on Employers with Multiple Locations” here on the OSHA Law Update Blog.

The gist of the article and the prior blog post is that companies that operate multiple facilities in different locations, such as national retail and grocery chains, grain ...

By: Michael Thompson

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that pharmaceutical sales representatives (PSRs) are “outside salesmen” who are not entitled to overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The high court’s ruling was predicated on its finding that, in the pharmaceutical industry’s “unique regulatory environment,” the commitments obtained by PSRs equate to traditional sales. Furthermore, the Supreme Court rebuked the Department of Labor (DOL) for “unfairly surprising” the industry by filing amicus briefs arguing that PSRs were not ...

Each party should be aware of key issues before preparing to negotiate transition services agreements

As I type this blog post, I would not be surprised if suddenly my computer froze, and I had to call the help desk.  While calling the help desk can sometimes seem like an annoyance, having a central function to deal with all information technology (IT) issues is actually essential to ensuring that hospitals and health systems are able to effectively close a merger transaction.

In fact, IT has become indispensable for many hospital and system functions, including for patient care and core ...

Written By: Adam C. Abrahms

Continuing its effort to “outreach” to non-union employees and educate them on their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, the NLRB has launched a new webpage on Concerted Activity.  The NLRB’s announcement  of its new webpage made clear the page is designed to inform employees of their rights “even if they are not in a union.”  

The webpage, in addition to giving basic descriptions of concerted activities, asserts that “The law we enforce gives employees the right to act together to try to improve their pay and working conditions or fix ...

Epstein Becker Green is proud to announce that it has received the 2012 Chambers USA Award for Excellence in the Healthcare category. The results were announced at an awards dinner held on Thursday, June 7, 2012, in New York. Other firms nominated in the Healthcare category included Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP; Hogan Lovells US LLP; King & Spalding LLP; McDermott Will & Emery LLP; Ober Kaler Grimes & Shriver PC; and Proskauer Rose LLP.

The Chambers USA Awards for Excellence are based on research for the 2012 edition of Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business and reflect ...

Few decisions are as significant for a community hospital as the decision to enter into a strategic affiliation, asset sale, merger, joint venture, or other dispositive transaction. But while the significance of such a decision cannot be overstated, the challenges of implementation – particularly for organizations without relevant transaction experience – cannot be understated. The following is a list of some of the key steps you should take when preparing for a potential transaction:

1. Designate a Leader and Build a Team. Identify and empower a project manager to take the lead ...

Organizations considering a significant transaction have a lot to think about.  One of the most important is making certain that relationships with key constituents and stakeholders are appropriately maintained and managed.  Too frequently, community hospitals and community health systems underestimate the scope and importance of those relationships.

Most of us can rattle-off a short list of key constituents and stakeholders for community hospitals and community health systems.

Here's my standard list, together with a short description of why they are important:

• Board ...

Many legal obstacles have long stood in the way of telehealth. There are licensure laws, prescribing laws, practice of medicine requirements, credentialing rules, insurance coverage issues, and concerns about privacy, among others.  These hurdles have until recently relegated telehealth to the most geographically remote corners of health care where the only means of obtaining medical care is by phone or computer connection to a provider hundreds of miles away.  But now, with physician shortages and the ubiquity of the smart phone, telehealth is beginning to show up all over the ...

There is a proposal moving through Congress that has some interesting implications for telemedicine.  Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) have proposed an amendment to the Online Pharmacy Safety Act that would impose additional restrictions on when and under what circumstances practitioners can prescribe medication under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.  Although the Online Pharmacy Act is primarily intended to put an end to illegitimate pharmacies and the fraudulent sale of drugs online, as the American Telemedicine Association, HealthLeaders

by Daniel E. Gospin and Amy F. Lerman

As part of continued efforts to expand the Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor (“RAC”) program, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in November 2011 the implementation of a demonstration project that will allow RACs to conduct prepayment reviews on certain types of Medicare claims that historically have resulted in high rates of improper payments.

The prepayment review demonstration project will focus these efforts in 11 states—seven of which were selected because they have significant populations of fraud- and ...

In 2012, both of Epstein Becker Green's founding practices, Health Care & Life Sciences and Labor & Employment, as well as several individual attorneys, were recognized as leaders in their fields of practice.

Specifically, Jay P. Krupin and Steven Swirsky were recognized in the Labor and Employment Management Relations Category.

Click here to read more about Epstein Becker Green’s recognition by Legal 500 United States

It should be an easy matter for an employer to determine which federal laws apply to it.  Not so, however, given the way in which the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) administers and enforces the federal affirmative action laws (Executive Order 11246, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act).

In the last sixteen months, OFCCP has (a) issued an expansive and controversial new “Directive 293,” asserting broad and deep jurisdiction over health care providers who participate in TRICARE, FEHBP ...