COVID-19

On April 12, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra extended the COVID-19 public health emergency for another 90 days. The PHE had been scheduled to expire on April 16.

The PHE originally went into effect in January 2020, at the onset of the pandemic. It provides important flexibilities for healthcare providers,

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

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on March 3 that Ameet Goyal, M.D., a Westchester-based ophthalmologist, was sentenced to 96 months in prison for falsely billing for millions of dollars of upcoded procedures over seven years, and for fraudulently obtaining two business loans under the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in the early

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

On Thursday, February 10, in the next installment of Rivkin Radler’s Healthcare Compliance Lunch & Learn series, Rivkin Radler Partner John Diviney will present a review of employment laws taking effect in 2022. The program will take place from 12:00 noon to 1:00 PM Eastern time via Zoom.

Some of the topics covered will be:

Eric Fader was featured on the LexBlog podcast, “This Week in Legal Blogging,” where he discussed his blog, Rivkin Rounds. The LexBlog article, “Eric Fader on his push to launch Rivkin Rounds and how it has paid off for him and his firm,” gives a brief overview of the topics the podcast goes into,

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs established a Temporary Emergency Reciprocity License (TERL) program to give emergency licenses to healthcare practitioners from states outside of New Jersey. The TERL program had been extended multiple times and was set to expire on January 11, 2022.

However, on January

Rivkin Radler’s Michael Sirignano wrote an article, “An Insurance Fraud Year in Review,” that was published in the January 6 issue of the New York Law Journal. Among the many cases and settlements discussed were False Claims Act cases involving federal healthcare programs, healthcare fraud related to COVID-19 testing and telehealth services,

On January 7, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments pursuant to emergency requests in two cases concerning COVID-19 mandates. One case involves a challenge by a coalition of interest groups and states opposed to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s mandate, which requires employees of businesses with 100 or more employees to receive