Health Law Scan

In the face of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the US president’s National Emergency Declaration, issued on March 13, set in motion several actions required of other agencies to provide the regulatory relief needed to ensure that healthcare providers have flexibility in responding quickly to the growing need in the United States.

Partner Reece Hirsch recently attended and spoke at the 2020 Health Datapalooza held in Washington, DC.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of General Counsel (OGC) offered the healthcare industry the benefit of its legal analysis of the recent US Supreme Court opinion in Azar v. Allina Health Services (Allina) with respect to its impact on Medicare payment rules, sharing its Memorandum to the Principal Deputy Administrator & Director of the Center for Medicare dated October 31, 2019 (OGC Memo) with the public.

We invite you to join us on Wednesday, November 20, for our second installment of the Fast Break: Regulatory Sprint series.

With bipartisan bills introduced in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate on October 30, Congress appears ready to expand access to telehealth benefits for Medicare beneficiaries. The Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies for Health Act of 2019 (CONNECT Act) may eliminate significant barriers Medicare beneficiaries currently face in accessing and utilizing telemedicine.

We invite you to join us on Wednesday, October 30, for Part 1 of our two-part Fast Break: Regulatory Sprint webinar.

Highlighting the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) efforts to transform the US healthcare system to a value-based model, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have issued two proposed rules that seek to alter the landscape of healthcare program integrity and fraud and abuse regulation, as part of what HHS calls the “Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care Initiative.”

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced more than $1.8 billion in funding to support the prevention and treatment of opioid addiction.

We address more than a dozen key proposals from the CMS outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) and ambulatory surgical center payment systems proposed rule in a recent LawFlash. Chief among them is the agency’s bold new proposal for a broad price transparency program.

Clearing the way for consideration by the US House of Representatives, the Ways and Means Committee has unanimously approved bipartisan legislation aimed at increasing drug price transparency by manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers through enhanced reporting and accountability requirements.