Behavioral Health

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut recently announced that Michael Lonski, a Greenwich psychologist, pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud. Lonski admitted to billing insurers for services that were not rendered, including for deceased patients, and for dates of service when he was out of the country, or his medical partner was out of…

On December 23, the U.S. Congress passed the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023,” the omnibus budget bill for fiscal year 2023 (HR 2617). The bill includes several provisions relating to Medicare coverage of telehealth, including extending some of the flexibilities that became effective at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The budget bill for…

As part of its 2023 state budget, New York State has allocated $1.2 billion for the payment of bonuses to certain frontline healthcare workers. This bonus program is intended to reward healthcare workers for their services during the COVID-19 pandemic and to promote employee retention and recruitment in the healthcare sector. Qualified employers who wish…

Regulators are now better armed to cite and fine health plans that are not complying with the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008. A recent report to Congress highlights the enforcement work to date and illustrates the extent to which many plans are noncompliant with the law. The result is that…

In a report published on March 31, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) begin to collect and analyze information about any effect telehealth has on the quality of care for Medicaid beneficiaries. CMS does not currently collect or analyze this information, nor does it have…

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services expanded Medicare coverage for telehealth nationwide, as discussed here. The $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill signed into law by President Biden today extended the current telehealth accommodations for 151 days after the end of the federal public health emergency, which…

We don’t often cover brand-new proposed legislation on Rivkin Rounds, generally preferring to wait until it’s closer to becoming law. However, two bipartisan bills introduced in Congress last week are worthy of mention.

The Telehealth Extension and Evaluation Act would allow the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to extend certain pandemic-era flexibilities in Medicare…

A study recently released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that the number of beneficiaries in the traditional Medicare program who used telehealth increased from 840,000 in 2019 to nearly 52.7 million in 2020. At the same time, the number of visits to doctors’ offices reimbursed under Part B decreased.…