Given the transformations taking place at every level in healthcare, it is no surprise that the 2017 SXSW Interactive Conference has a big spotlight on the industry. One superstar in the spotlight this year is wearables. The accelerator pitches during SXSW include ones for wearables designed to improve prenatal care and early breast cancer detection, and there is even a presentation on brain wearables to detect stress, improve focus, and even to let you play video games with your brain. That’s right, brain wearables that help you focus and let you play video games.

A little rain can’t stop SXSW. Husch Blackwell attorneys have attended dozens of interesting presentations and met countless innovative minds. We will continue to post live updates on Twitter (@HBhealthcarelaw) and release brief blog posts related to certain presentations throughout the event. With former VP Joe Biden in town to discuss his cancer moonshot today, our focus is precision medicine.

Precision medicine is an innovative approach to medical treatment that takes into account individual differences in people’s genes, environments, and lifestyles. The promise of precision medicine is delivering the right treatments, at the right time, to the right person. The potential of precision medicine is recognized at the highest levels of government. In his 2015 State of the Union address, former President Barack Obama launched the Precision Medicine Initiative (“PMI”), a bold new research effort to revolutionize health and the treatment of disease. Subsequently, Sylvia M. Burwell, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (“DHHS”), announced the FY 2016 budget would include $215 million for the PMI, with $200 million of this to be used by the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) to launch the All of Us program, a national cohort of a million or more Americans who volunteer to share genetic, clinical, and other data to improve research. The funds will also be used to invest in expanding current cancer genomics research and to initiate new studies on how a tumor’s DNA can inform prognosis and treatment choices.

Today kicks-off one of Austin’s largest and best-known events, the South by Southwest Interactive Conference. In the spirit of Husch Blackwell’s involvement in several aspects of the conference, this post will touch on emerging health technology and pushing the limits of HIPAA.

New technology is being developed to be used in healthcare settings on a…

On Monday, March 6, 2017, House Republicans released the long awaited proposed legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The GOP bill, the “American Health Care Act” (AHCA), repeals or significantly changes major portions of the ACA involving the individual and employer mandates, subsidies, and Medicaid expansion, among others. The AHCA, which is already facing political headwinds and healthcare industry objections, has not yet been scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), so the economic effect and the potential change to the number of people covered by health insurance have not been officially quantified. However, the AHCA’s overall philosophy and goals are clear, and it signals areas of concern for healthcare providers and Medicaid expansion States. In this article in our series on the effect of a “slow repeal” of the ACA, this week’s discussion focuses on the significant aspects of the proposed AHCA, potential concerns for healthcare providers, and likely next steps.

This is the seventh article in our series on the effect of a “slow repeal” of the ACA. This week’s discussion focuses on the potential impact on healthcare technology.

Industry experts are predicting that a slow repeal of the ACA will have very little, if any, negative impact on healthcare technology. Healthcare technology grew at an unprecedented pace under the ACA, in part because the ACA contains provisions which provide healthcare technology with incentives to develop and implement new systems aimed at increasing efficiency. Despite the significant amount of uncertainty with a slow repeal of the ACA for many players in the healthcare industry, healthcare technology appears to be poised for continued growth through value-based care, telemedicine, and the increased need for interoperability.

Earlier we wrote that two Fifth Circuit cases seemed to reach inconsistent determinations about the availability of punitive and pain and suffering damages under the FLSA and ADEA. The Fifth Circuit previously expressed its intent to interpret the remedies provision under the FLSA and ADEA consistently with each other. Please see our discussion at via our January 13 blog post.

One of those opinions has been withdrawn and a new opinion substituted, but the inconsistency remains, The Vaughan v. Anderson Regional Medical Center decision was first issued on December 16, 2016 (we discussed the first issued version in our prior post). But because the opinion contained some manifest inconsistencies with the Pineda v. JTCH Apartments, LLC opinion issued just three days later, the plaintiff in Vaughan requested a rehearing en banc. Although the court denied the petition for a rehearing en banc, the court withdrew the prior opinion and substituted a new opinion. The new Vaughan opinion reaches the same ultimate conclusion and holding as the prior opinion, but it contains a few revisions that make clear its holding on ADEA remedies does not extend to FLSA remedies. But still, the two panels did not interpret remedies available under the ADEA and the FLSA consistently.

This is the sixth article in our series on the effect of a “slow repeal” of the ACA. This week’s discussion focuses on the potential impact on post-acute care providers.

The term “post-acute care provider” encompasses a large and diverse group of healthcare providers that includes nursing facilities, home health agencies, hospice agencies and assisted living communities. While each group has its own very unique industry characteristics, they all have at least one thing in common: none of them rely, to any great extent, on private insurance as a form of payment. This is because the vast majority of the patients served by post-acute care providers are older than 65 and, accordingly, are covered by Medicare. So, any repeal efforts relating to the private insurance exchanges that expanded healthcare coverage for more than 30 million Americans will have minimal impact on post-acute care providers. Instead, the key issue facing post-acute care providers relating to the slow repeal of the ACA is the threatened conversion of Medicaid into a block grant program.

In addition to H.B. 307 (discussed in a prior post), H.B. 1566 and its companion bill, S.B. 507, propose to expand the requirement for mediation of balance bills.

Currently, Chapter 1467 of the Texas Insurance Code requires a facility-based physician to mediate balance bills upon the request of the patient if the patient is responsible to a facility-based physician, after copayments, deductibles, and coinsurance, including the amount unpaid by the administrator or insurer, for an amount greater than $500 and either (i) the facility-based physician fails to disclose projected amounts for which the patient may be responsible and the circumstances under which the enrollee would be responsible for those amounts; or (ii) the facility-based physician makes the disclosures but the amount billed is greater than the maximum amount projected in the disclosure.

This is the fifth article in our series on the effect of the “slow repeal” of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This week’s article focuses on the potential impact of the slow repeal of the ACA on rural communities and healthcare.

Continued Fragile System Leads to Uncertainty or Closure Causing Economic Ripple Effect Throughout Rural America

There are nearly 5,000 short-term, acute care hospitals in the United States, half of which are in rural areas. About four in 10 rural hospitals are located in the South. More than half of rural hospitals are Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) (53.5%); a smaller share of rural hospitals are designated as Sole Community Hospitals (SCHs) (13%), Medicare Dependent Hospitals (MDHs) (8%), and Rural Referral Centers (RRCs) (11%). All of these designations provide enhanced or supplemental reimbursement under Medicare, using different formulas. Rural hospitals that do not qualify for these Medicare programs are reimbursed as standard Medicare Prospective Payment System (PPS) hospitals.

Note: this guidance is now outdated. Please refer to this blog for current guidance.

On February 15, 2017, the IRS announced on its website that, based upon its review of the White House’s January 20, 2017, executive order, it would continue to accept returns filed by taxpayers that do not report whether the taxpayer has complied with the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Individual taxpayers are required to report on their returns whether they have health insurance coverage, qualify for an exemption to the coverage requirement, or are making a shared responsibility payment. Previously, the IRS had made changes to its software that processes tax returns so that returns filed without these sections completed would be automatically rejected and treated as not filed. Now, those returns will be treated as filed, and the missing information will be addressed by the IRS.