Health Law Advisor

[caption id="attachment_1475" align="alignright" width="113"] Robert E. Wanerman[/caption]

A group of conservative members of Congress have introduced a pair of bills (S. 2724 and H.R. 4768) that would sweep away one of the basic principles of administrative law if they became law. The proposed amendments would make it easier to challenge many determinations involving the Department of Health and Human Services in federal courts by legislatively overruling the deference commonly applied to agency interpretations of the law.

Even before the Administrative Procedure Act was ...

Our colleague Nancy L. Gunzenhauser, an Associate at Epstein Becker Green, has a post on the Retail Labor and Employment Blog that will be of interest to many of our readers in the health industry: "Reminder: All Philadelphia Employers Must Post New Ban-the-Box Poster."

Following is an excerpt:

One of the requirements of the amended Philadelphia ban-the-box law has gone into effect. As of March 14, 2016, Philadelphia employers are required to post a new poster provided by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations in a conspicuous place on both the employer’s website and on ...

[caption id="attachment_1475" align="alignright" width="113"] Robert E. Wanerman[/caption]

Even after the Secretary of HHS admitted that the current backlog of Medicare Part B appeals would take ten years to adjudicate at current staffing and funding levels, that was not enough for a hospital to obtain any relief from a court. Cumberland County Hospital System, Inc. v. Burwell, No. 15-1393 (4th Cir., Mar. 7, 2016).  In that case, a North Carolina hospital had initially been paid for over 900 claims, but those claims were subsequently determined to be ineligible after a ...

[caption id="attachment_2401" align="alignright" width="113"] Denise Dadika[/caption]

Everyone has “friends” who overshare their daily activities on Facebook.  Rodney Jones’ oversharing cost him his job.  Jones worked as an activity director for Accentia Health, a long–term care nursing facility.  Accentia Health granted Jones 12 weeks of FMLA and an additional 30 days of non-FMLA leave in connection with his shoulder surgery.  Prior to the end of Jones’ leave, Accentia Health learned that Jones was posting about his leave activities on Facebook, including his ...

[caption id="attachment_2394" align="alignright" width="113"] Nathaniel M. Glasser[/caption]

In case you missed it, last week the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) blogged about the misclassification of workers in the home care industry.  As a reminder, on October 1, 2013, the DOL issued its home care final rule, which (1) more narrowly defines the tasks that comprise exempt “companionship service” and (2) limits the exemptions for companionship services and live-in domestic service employees to individuals, families, or households using the service, and no longer ...

On October 26, 2015, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") and the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") (collectively the "Agencies") issued a joint statement to the Virginia Certificate of Public Need ("COPN") Work Group encouraging the Work Group and the Virginia General Assembly to repeal or restrict the state's certificate of need process.  The Virginia COPN Work Group was tasked by the Virginia General Assembly to review the current COPN process and recommend any changes that should be made to it.

Thirty-six states currently maintain some form of ...

Our colleague Joshua A. Stein has a Retail Labor and Employment Law Blog post that will be of interest to many of our health industry readers: “Defending Against Website Accessibility Claims: Recent Decisions Suggest the Primary Jurisdiction Doctrine Is Unlikely to Serve As Businesses’ Silver Bullet.”

Following is an excerpt:

For businesses hoping to identify an avenue to quickly and definitively defeat the recent deluge of website accessibility claims brought by industrious plaintiff’s firms, advocacy groups, and government regulators in the initial stages of ...

[caption id="attachment_1416" align="alignright" width="113"] Stuart Gerson[/caption]

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided (6-2, with Kennedy writing for the majority and  Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissenting) the case of Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.  The matter before the Court involved Vermont law requiring certain entities, including health insurers, to report payments relating to health care claims and other information relating to health care services to a state agency for compilation in an all-inclusive health care database. 

In an important victory ...

As you all know, the subject of telehealth reimbursement continues to vex the community. For example, Medicare lags far behind.  According to the Center for Telehealth and eHealth Law, Medicare reimbursed approximately $14 million total under its telehealth benefit for 2014.  This represents less than .0025 percent of the total Medicare reimbursed for services that year.  Medicaid is something of a mixed bag with the vast majority of states providing some coverage for telehealth, but many lagging in coverage and reimbursement for store-and-forward services and remote patient ...

With the untimely passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the best known and most controversial Justice on the Court, commentators, including this one, have been called upon to assess his legacy – both immediate and long term – in various areas of the law.

Justice Scalia was not known primarily as an antitrust judge and scholar. Indeed, in his confirmation hearing for the Court, he joked about what he saw as the incoherent nature of much of antitrust analysis. What he was best known for, of course, is his method of analysis of statutes and the Constitution: a literal ...