Healthcare Empowered
I have been practicing health law for more than 25 years and have had the benefit of working with a lot of healthcare providers. My clients will often repeat myths about the practice of healthcare they have heard from their colleagues. There are also occasions when my fellow attorneys will make assumptions about healthcare law […]
For much of the past decade, peripheral neurostimulator devices have been used liberally by some practitioners to treat chronic pain. In addition to pain relief, any manufacturers also promise providers that these devices are reimbursable by Medicare. This combination of relief and reimbursement has proven irresistible. Why not use a device that gives patients relief […]
Advisory Opinion 21-01 expands on the language of the amended Declaration to clarify that the PREP Act provides complete preemptive federal jurisdiction for cases in which it is a defense. Once invoked, the PREP Act provides complete preemptive federal jurisdiction, and the federal court retains the case to decide whether the immunity and preemption provisions apply; if they do not apply, then the court would try the case as it would a diversity case.
Many covered entities enter into written agreements with pharmacies (contract pharmacies) to distribute their covered outpatient drugs to the entities’ patients. The covered entity orders and pays for the 340B drugs, which are then shipped from the manufacturer to the contract pharmacy. The contract pharmacy then sends the drug to the patient. The covered entity purchases the drug, and the contract pharmacy provides the pharmacy services to dispense the drug to a patient.
In the advisory opinion, the HHS Office of the General Counsel asserts that the plain meaning of Section 340B requires manufacturers to sell covered drugs to covered entities at or below the ceiling price.
On January 14, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published a final rule that, for the first time, adopts a regulatory standard for determining whether a particular item or service is “reasonable and necessary” under section 1862(a)(1)(A) of the Social Security Act (SSA) and sets the stage for commercial insurance coverage to be considered in assessing such coverage in prescribed circumstances. In addition, the final rule establishes a “Medicare Coverage of Innovative Technology” (MCIT) pathway, which is a voluntary and expedited mechanism to obtain national Medicare coverage for medical devices designated with “breakthrough” device status by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The hospitals said HHS wrongly calculated their Medicare disproportionate share hospital payments for fiscal year 2015, using the wrong data. As a result, the hospitals appealed the DSH payment decision to the HHS provider reimbursement review board, where it was dismissed. In its dismissal, the review board said it lacked jurisdiction to consider the hospitals’ objections to their payments.
The Hospital Price Transparency Rule went into effect on January 1, 2021. The Rule requires all hospitals operating within the United States to make public a list of their standard charges for items and services via the Internet in a machine-readable format. Hospitals must also provide prices for a list of 300 shoppable services that […]
Under the Affordable Care Act’s amendments to the Stark Law, a Physician Owned Hospital (POH) cannot expand the aggregate number of operating rooms, procedure rooms or licensed beds beyond the number for which the hospital was licensed on March 23, 2010. The Secretary of Health and Human Services may grant an exception to this prohibition […]
[T]he Final Rule will modify the federal health care program’s Anti-Kickback Statute (“AKS”) safe harbors in three key ways: First, it will remove safe harbor protection under the AKS for rebates that a pharmaceutical manufacturer provides to Medicare Part D plan sponsors (either directly or indirectly through the PBMs with which they contract). In apparent […]
Under the model, healthcare providers — which CMS calls “direct contracting entities,” or DCEs — will competitively bid to manage 100% of the Medicare Part A and Part B costs for a certain number of Medicare beneficiaries within a geographic region, starting at a minimum of 30,000 enrollees. Who can be a DCE? “We anticipate […]