Many Issues Remain in Ethics, Compliance Under Affordable Care Act
It’s been five years now since the Affordable Care Act was officially enacted. It required Medicaid and Medicare providers to put a compliance and ethics system in place, and at ...
Hospital Mergers Created Larger Systems in 2014
A new survey by Kaufman Hall, a health care consulting firm, indicates that hospital mergers and acquisitions came at a rapid rate in 2014. While the 95 deals that occurred ...
Officials Introduce Bill in Attempt to Repeal Affordable Care Act
As has been very well documented over the past six years, the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act is not without its detractors, especially in congress. Now, a group of ...
More than 11 Million People Have Signed Up for Affordable Care Act Insurance
On Tuesday, February 17, one day after open enrollment ended for Affordable Care Act coverage for 2015, the White House announced that more than 11 million people will be covered ...
Anthem Hack Puts Information of 80 Million People at Risk
Anthem Inc., one of the nation’s largest providers of health insurance, was the subject of a significant security breach in early February that resulted in up to 80 million people ...
What Does the Future of Health Care Reform Look Like?
March marks the five-year anniversary of the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It’s hard to believe it has already been five years. And while there have ...
How Do Emergency Situations Impact HIPAA Compliance?
Every time an emergency public health situation arises in the news, a debate ensues about patient privacy. Strict Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards ensure that patients receive privacy, ...
Health Care Providers Slow to Implement Risk-Based Reimbursement Models
With significant changes in the medical field due to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the current fee-for-service health care model is likely on its way out. However, though ...
Stark Law and ‘Self-Referral’: A Primer
The Stark Law was originally implemented in the 1990s and among its provisions it prohibited physicians from “self-referring” Medicare patients. However, there is an exception in this law that allow ...
Easy Steps to Protect Patient Health Information
Your patients’ health information requires careful safeguarding. When the security of this information is breached, your practice may face not only serious HIPAA-related penalties, but you risk the personal and ...