For the second time in as many years, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) entered into settlement agreements with and levied hefty fines on three hospitals that allegedly impermissibly disclosed patients’ protected health information to ABC News in the course of filming a television network documentary series.  OCR announced on September 20 that Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital each reached agreements with HHS…

Nearly three months following House passage of a legislative proposal related to America’s opioid epidemic, the Senate overwhelmingly cleared its own comprehensive, bipartisan package to address the crisis. On Monday, September 17, senators replaced the House-passed text with a substitute amendment and approved The Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 (H.R. 6) by a vote of 99-1. The bill, authored by Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN), resulted from…

Along with the Federal Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry (BPI), the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany and the Federal Association of German In-house Lawyers (BUJ), we cordially invite you to attend our Life Sciences Day on 20 September 2018 in Frankfurt. The trend for public and private healthcare systems over the past few years has involved strained revenues and declining margins. Finite resources will continue to be taxed with necessary infrastructure projects and an…

FCC COMMENCES INQUIRY ON ESTABLISHING $100M TELEHEALTH PILOT PROGRAM On August 2, 2018, The Federal Communications Commission has unanimously approved a Notice of Inquiry (“NOI”) to establish a $100-million  telehealth pilot program. FCC seeks to identify how the agency can “help advance and support the movement in telehealth towards connected care everywhere and improve access to the life-saving broadband-enabled telehealth services it makes possible.” The NOI seeks public comment: initial comments by September 10 and…

Many may view a C plea to mean a Corporate Plea. Used infrequently, a C plea restricts discretion of a federal district judge to sentence a criminal defendant. When one federal judge expressed his concerns about a proposed C plea for a pharmaceutical company, he changed the result. In an article published by the American Health Lawyers Association, Rebecca Worthington and Tom Zeno analyze the case. Additional posts about this case can be found here…

A recent report from Lex Machina shows that an increasing number of companies (no doubt including those in the healthcare industry) are turning to the assertion of trade secret claims to protect their intellectual property rights in federal courts – in large part thanks to the passage of the Defend Trade Secret Acts (“DTSA”). Between 2009 and 2016, trade secret suit filings were relatively constant, with an average of approximately 900 cases per year. In…

The “joint employer” doctrine affects healthcare as much as nearly any industry. Healthcare entities frequently rely on outside labor to meet their objectives, such as by contracting with specialty medical providers, hiring temporary administrative staff to fill short-term vacancies, using outside vendors for routine custodial work and maintenance, or through myriad other relationships. In this situation, however, an entity faces a difficult balance between (a) controlling outside workers enough to protect its reputation and good…