Health Law Scan

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), State of California, and Utah Division of Consumer Protection recently filed a sweeping complaint against telemedicine company Hims & Hers Health, Inc., using federal and state consumer-protection laws to assert allegations against its direct-to-consumer telehealth business. The case is notable as regulators are not relying on a traditional health-privacy statute but rather general consumer-protection laws to challenge health-data advertising practices and aspects of Hims’s subscription model. 

The old adage—March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb—didn’t quite hold true for the hospice sector, which experienced a late-month flurry of activity. The government gave the hospice sector a lot to consider, from MedPAC’s suggested freeze on hospice rates to CMS’s 2025 Proposed Hospice Rule (public comments due May 28, 2024) that, if finalized as is, would include a 2.6% payment bump. CMS’s Proposed Hospice Rule lays the groundwork for the long-anticipated Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) quality measures data collection instrument, which will be used to collect data at various points during the hospice stay, not just at admission and discharge.