Under Stark law, doctors are prevented from making self-referrals. More precisely, physicians are restricted from referring Medicare and Medicaid patients to a DHS (designated health services) provider if that provider has a financial relationship with the physician....
Health care practice administrators often receive frustrating communications from insurance companies. The last-minute requests for credentialing renewals can be especially upsetting because of the amount of information you must submit. The easiest way to handle...
Despite the fact that most doctors and their staff use good judgement when it comes to patient care, there are thousands of medical malpractice lawsuits brought each year. Mistakes do occur but just not all medical malpractice cases are justified and not all...
In 2009, legislation authorized the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) to offer health care providers financial incentives to use certified electronic health recording technology (CEHRT) to keep electronic health records (EHRs) on patients. Learn about...
Like everyone else, physicians and health-care professionals have taken to texting in a big way. Results of a recent study of health care providers revealed that 64% percent of the physicians surveyed regularly use SMS (text) messaging to send and receive patient data...
To a lot of people, physicians and lawyers do not go together. But the truth is that physicians are more likely to need a lawyer than other people because of the nature of their work. Since their job requires them to interact with a lot of people on a daily basis,...
The Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Health and Human Services recently passed a regulation providing an exception to certain prohibitions under the Civil Monetary Penalties Law (CMPL). This exception allows pharmacies and other healthcare...
On July 27th of this year, the FDA announced its Digital Health Innovation Action Plan, which is intended to speed up the process(es) associated with bringing innovations in digital health to market. It was developed by the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological...
In 2015, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act was passed, and by 2019, healthcare providers will begin to see its impacts on Medicare payments. It replaces Medicare’s current reimbursement schedule—which was based on a sustainable growth rate (SGR)...
Established as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Medicare’s Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) attempts to create an incentive for hospitals to cut down the number of readmissions they have for various types of acute care. As of 2017, these types of...
