During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (the “CMS”) relaxed some rules to expand access to telehealth, including through audio-only communication platforms. With the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the public health emergency is expected to be brought to an end. As such, the emergency measures temporarily put in place will expire, leaving many patients in rural areas and lower-income households without access to telehealth services. A survey from a digital behavioral health company, Triduum, found that 81% of behavioral healthcare providers began u ..read more

From the very outset of the COVID-19 pandemic the development of an effective and safe vaccine for COVID-19 became a public and private priority pursed with urgency and intensity. Towards that end, the United States government and federal agencies are collaborating with private biopharmaceutical companies to accelerate the vaccine development. This article will briefly summarize the following: (1) regulatory efforts to accelerate vaccine development, (2) the various collaborations established to develop a vaccine, and (3) the current state of the most promising—and government funded—clinical t ..read more

As the national COVID-19 Public Health Emergency persists, uncertainty regarding our families’ and our own health and safety continues to grow. With several businesses forced to close their doors and layoff employees due to the COVID-19 outbreak, over half a million Pennsylvanians have filed for unemployment in the last week—adding uncertainty regarding financial stability to our worries. While healthcare professionals and public officials work relentlessly to protect our communities from the COVID-19 virus, we cannot ignore the impact this uncertainty can have on the mental health of many peo ..read more

As Pennsylvania experiences its first cases of COVID-19 (a novel form of Coronavirus), with fourteen presumptive cases at the time of this writing, the Commonwealth is taking all necessary actions to combat the spread of the disease and keep Pennsylvanians informed as to how to best protect themselves. Currently, a majority of Pennsylvania’s cases have presented in Montgomery County, while other cases have been reported in Bucks, Delaware, Monroe, Philadelphia, and Wayne counties. According to reports, one patient is a cardiologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s King of Prussia c ..read more

Change may be coming soon to Pennsylvania’s medical malpractice venue rule (Rule 1006(a.1))—a change that could send medical malpractice filings in Philadelphia skyrocketing. Last week, the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee (the “Legislative Committee”) released a report on the potential impact of eliminating the medical malpractice venue rule, which has renewed debate on the issue of where medical malpractice patients should be allowed to file. The current rule, adopted in 2003, requires plaintiffs to file malpractice actions in the county where their injury occurred, unless that injur ..read more

Written by guest contributors Kyle Letner, MBA, and Brandon Danz, M.H.A., M.P.A. This is the second in a two-part article on healthcare data transparency and how providers and payers can leverage data as a population health opportunity. Part one, TRANSPARENCY: Embracing CMS’s Push To Publicize Your Organization’s Performance, reported on ways federal and state agencies are advancing healthcare data transparency as a vehicle to transition to value-based reimbursement. This follow-up article shares promising practices being developed by forward-thinking healthcare organizations to use data in ne ..read more

(This is the first in a two-part article on healthcare data transparency and how providers and payers can leverage transparency as a population health opportunity.) The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is launching new value-based programs with great fervor as a central strategy to bend the healthcare cost curve. Value-based reimbursement models linked to achieving the Triple Aim have received broad bipartisan support and are widely seen as a new ‘normal’ within healthcare. In a recent new program announcement, CMS Director Seema Verma stated that “as we seek to unleash innova ..read more

The U.S. Supreme Court has just issued a unanimous decision in the case Cochise Consultancy Inc. et al. v. U.S. ex. rel Hunt (decided on May 13, 2019), that qui tam whistleblowers can invoke the ‘”government knowledge” three-year tolling provision in the False Claims Act (the “FCA”) suits. The qui tam provisions in the FCA have been the federal government’s most powerful tool for combatting fraudulent contracts and healthcare false claims to the U.S. government, and continue proliferation of fraud recovery actions. Under the FCA, cases must be filed within the six years of the alleged violatio ..read more