Jan. 30, 2012

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(1) HHS published an interim final rule Jan. 10 adopting new standards for electronic funds transfers between Medicare, Medicaid and commercial plans and their providers .... (more)

(2) President Obama devoted just one paragraph to health care reform in his Jan. 24 State of the Union speech, reports Politico. Focusing instead on security and economic issues, Obama briefly said he would not “go back to the days” before the law was enacted. (Reprinted from AIS’s Health Reform Week's e-News Alert)

(3) Cancer Genetics, Inc. paid the federal government $1 million to settle allegations that it improperly submitted claims to Medicare for chromosome karyotyping studies from July 2003 to March 2005 .... (more)

(4) Providers that lose their Medicaid billing privileges in one state may quickly find themselves blacklisted from all Medicaid plans, according to a Jan. 20 CMS bulletin that elaborates on why providers could be terminated .... (more)

(5) Sixty-six hospitals in Medicare administrative contractor Jurisdiction 12 overstated their Medicare graduate medical education reimbursement for full-time equivalent residents in 2006 and 2007 .... (more)

(6) An Atlanta man was sentenced to 13 months in prison for allegedly accessing a rival medical practice’s computer that contained patients’ personal information .... (more)

(7) The former director of construction for Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., was sentenced Jan. 17 to three years in prison for orchestrating a kickback scheme in which companies were paid for work that allegedly was never done .... (more)

(8) HHS said Jan. 20 that its forthcoming final rule on preventive health services will require some nonprofit employers who do not provide contraceptive coverage in their insurance plan because of religious beliefs to begin providing such coverage without cost sharing. Such employers will have an additional year, until Aug. 1, 2013, to do so. The interim final rule, issued in August 2011, allows certain non-profit religious employers to choose whether to include contraceptive services in sponsored health coverage. Certain organizations, such as churches, still may retain that exemption in the final rule. (Reprinted from AIS’s Health Reform Week's e-News Alert)

(9) On Jan. 9, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil injunctive action against three former top executives of WellCare Health Plans, Inc. ... (more)

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