Health Law Advisor

In May 2012, the Employee Benefit Research Institute (“EBRI”) issued a report showing that the percentage of workers covered by employer-sponsored health care coverage (measured through April 2011) continued to fall despite improvement in the economy.  Employer-sponsored health care coverage is the most common source of health care coverage for workers who exceed the poverty line and who are not yet eligible for Medicare.  It covers approximately 69% of workers, 46% of non-working adults and 55% of children.

The EBRI report notes that there is a generally recognized link ...

In the latest application of the law of unintended consequences….

As you may know, on May 16, 2012, CMS issued a final rule revising the conditions of participation by hospitals in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. (Download the final rule.) Among other things, the final rule includes a provision requiring that at least one member of a hospital's medical staff be included on the governing body of the hospital or hospital system.

This provision did not appear in the proposed rule, and was apparently added to the final rule in response to commenters who suggested that CMS's proposal to ...

As of May 18, 2012, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has received 42,000 petitions that count against the 65,000 H-1B Regular Cap, and 16,000 petitions that count against the 20,000 H-1B Master's Cap. USCIS will continue to accept new petitions until it has filled the H-1B Regular and Master’s Cap.

Click here to read the Special Immigration Alert in its entirety.

Join us Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 9:00 am Eastern either by Webinar or in person for a complimentary briefing presented by Epstein Becker Green attorneys Eric J. Conn and Amanda R. Strainis-Walker of the Firm’s national OSHA Practice Group.

The briefing will cover actions that employers can take now to prepare their workplaces and workforce for unexpected visits from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), review employers’ and employees’ rights during an OSHA inspection, and discuss inspection strategies to ensure the best possible outcome from an ...

For those healthcare employers that have been resting on your laurels and viewing through rose-colored glasses your entity’s HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) and HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) compliance efforts, the time has come to thoroughly clean your glasses and prepare for increased Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) enforcement actions.  Speaking at the recent National HIPAA Summit, the OCR’s Director, Leon Rodriguez, announced that the OCR intends to follow the Office of Inspector ...

You frequently hear the phrase "location, location, location" be used to describe the value of real estate.  True, location matters tremendously, no matter the type of real estate.  But, in hospital M&A transactions, the value of the real estate assets is often derived from "strategy, strategy, strategy".  Today, the real estate assets of hospitals are playing an increasingly important role in hospital M&A transactions.  This trend is caused in part by the desire of purchasers to support purchase prices or other financial impact of the transaction with "hard" physical assets, given ...

by Joseph J. Kempf, Jr., and Jackie Selby

Evolving reimbursement models for health care providers (away from “fee for service” and toward “pay for performance” and risk sharing) raise interesting questions as to how such payments will be treated under the new medical loss ratio rules under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Some of the payments will not qualify as “medical expense” or “quality improvement activities” and will be treated as “administrative expense,” so providers and insurers and health plans may want to take these rules into ...

by James S. Frank, Steven M. Swirsky, Adam C. Abrahms, Donald S. Krueger, and D. Martin Stanberry

In a sharp setback for the National Labor Relations Board (the "Board"), a federal district court in Washington, D.C. (the "Court"), struck down the Board's election rules, which took effect on April 30, 2012, on technical grounds, holding that the Board did not have a properly constituted quorum of three members when it voted to change its election rules and procedures. See Chamber of Commerce v. NLRB, No. 11-2262 (JEB), Slip Op., 2012 WL 1664028 (D.D.C. May 14, 2012). This decision comes ...

Not long ago, I had my appendix out.  Not wanting to spend more than necessary, I did a little reading on the subject and decided to do some of the pre-op work myself.  In addition to making certain the incision area was appropriately clean, I entered the hospital with my own set of scalpels and my own special concoction of over the counter pain killers to self-anesthetize.  Once in the hospital, I decided I might as well start the procedure and so I . . . .

Of course, I'm making this up.

But there is a point here.  While I would never consider beginning even minor surgery on myself, many hospitals and ...