President Trump has signed disaster declarations for Texas and Louisiana. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price signed a public health emergency declaration for Texas and Louisiana, authorizing the use of Section 1135 waivers of certain Medicare and Medicaid regulations. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is coordinating the requests and approvals to use … Read more
With the largest EMTALA fine (civil monetary penalty) in the history of the 1986 law, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) has fired what appears to be a massive warning shot across the bow of hospital emergency departments across the country. On June 23, 2017, AnMed Health in Anderson, S.C. entered into a $1,295,000 … Read more
We had a patient in our ER this evening who presented with dehiscence of a ventral hernia repair which was done at another facility several days ago. Patient and his family were adamant they did not want to return to that facility. The ER physicians called all the surgeons … Read more
Is your organization up to date on HIPAA compliant patient access to their own records? In 2016 OCR issued new guidance setting out standards for patient access to records as a high priority for HIPAA COMPLIANCE. The guidance can be found at https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/access/index.html In response to the new guidance and to aid covered entities … Read more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), has announced a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) civil money penalty against Children’s Medical Center of Dallas (Children’s) based on its impermissible disclosure of unsecured electronic protected health information (ePHI) and non-compliance over many years with multiple standards … Read more
Illinois’ Presence Health Network found out in a big way in a December 29, 2016 settlement with the HIPAA enforcement unit of Office of Civil Rights for the sun of $475,000. While the settlement does not admit wrong-doing, the settlement agreement released by OCR states the grounds are allegations of a delay in breach notifications … Read more
Reminder – EMTALA reality: Since the dawn of EMTALA I have been telling people that one of the biggest compliance problems with the law is that nobody reads the definitions. Later when the regulations and site review guidelines (State Operations Manual) came out, the second big set of “definitions” were included in the law through … Read more
One of the most common “gotcha’s” when CMS shows up is to be missing a mandatory sign in some obscure location, and the deadline for a new mandatory sign is coming up on the 16th. CMS has posted resources to help you comply with the right wording and languages. A sample of the required sign … Read more