A Dec. 1 Strafford webinar on the legal and regulatory challenges of Ebola will feature five Husch Blackwell attorneys. The 90-minute CLE webinar with interactive Q&A will provide guidance to healthcare counsel and their clients in addressing HIPAA and EMTALA concerns when treating Ebola patients.
The panel will discuss state and federal mandatory reporting requirements, employment issues and lessons learned from the first U.S. Ebola cases.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released a bulletin on Nov. 10 reminding entities covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that the protections continue to be in effect during emergencies, including Ebola and other outbreaks. HHS wants to make sure healthcare providers are aware of the ways in which patient information may be shared under the HIPAA Privacy Rule in emergency situations.
The Texas Health & Human Services Commission (HHSC) proposed changes on Oct. 17, 2014, to its regulations that largely prohibit “incident to” billing for advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) and physician assistant (PA) providers. Specifically, changes proposed to Tex. Admin. Code Title 1 §§354.1001 and 354.1062 prohibit a service performed by an APRN or PA from being billed under the billing number of a supervising physician unless the physician made a decision regarding the patient’s care or treatment during the billable medical visit and documented that decision in the patient’s record. See 39 Texas Register 8107 (Oct. 17, 2014).
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) issued a proposed rule Oct. 2 that would add new safe harbors to the Anti-Kickback Statute (“AKS”) regulations and interpret existing, statutory safe harbors. The rule would also amend the Civil Monetary Penalties (“CMP”) regulations by adding statutory exceptions to the regulatory definition of “remuneration” and codifying the so-called “gainsharing CMP” found in the Social Security Act.
Now that patients with Ebola have landed on U.S. soil, hospitals and other healthcare providers must prepare for the possibility that a patient with Ebola will walk through the doors. In this Oct. 30 webinar, Husch Blackwell presenters will look at some of the pressing legal issues related to treating patients with communicable diseases such as Ebola, and what providers can do now to prepare their clinical, compliance and legal teams.
Husch Blackwell attorneys Ed Barker and Joe Geraci discussed hospital legal issues related to a recent Ebola patient with the Texas Lawyer publication. The two-day period between the recent Dallas, Texas, Ebola patient’s first visit and isolation is the key to potential legal issues for the hospital, according to Barker and Geraci.
The Ebola patient…
The Kentucky Supreme Court issued an opinion Aug. 21, 2014, (Tibbs v. Bunnell, Ky., No. 2012-SC-000603-MR) in which it held that the incident report developed by the University of Kentucky Hospital (“hospital”), through the hospital’s Patient Safety Evaluation System (“PSES”), following the death of a patient, was not protected as patient safety work product (“PSWP”) under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (the “Act”).
On July 11, 2014, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) released a Technical Advice Memorandum (“TAM”) dated March 7, 2008, which concluded that, contrary to the general rule set forth in Revenue Ruling 85-110 (“Rev. Ruling 85-110”), a tax-exempt hospital’s income from laboratory testing services to patients of private physicians is not subject to the unrelated business income tax.
For construction financing of single- or dual-tenant medical office buildings, credit tenant lease (CTL) offers an intriguing option for developers. A healthcare system or a large healthcare-related company would fit the criteria for consideration.
With CTL financing, the lease rental income is leveraged as the basis for repayment of the loan. In fact, the rental payments are assigned and paid directly to the lender. Because the CTL structure more closely resembles a bond rather than a real estate loan, the interest rate on the note will be determined by the creditworthiness of the tenant(s) rather than the value of the underlying real estate and creditworthiness of, or credit enhancement from, the borrower. The higher the creditworthiness of the tenant(s), the lower the interest rate on the loan.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the New York State Attorney General intervened in a federal False Claims Act (FCA) case on June 27, 2014, accusing Mount Sinai Health System of failing to report and return Medicaid overpayments within 60 days of identifying them. See U.S. ex rel Kane v. Healthfirst, Inc., et al., No. 11-2325 (S.D.N.Y). This case is one of the first examples of litigation involving “the 60-day repayment provision” under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
