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 the time, Congress deferred the timing and implementation of that specific requirement to the Department of Health and Human Services.

However, the department and the federal government has moved slowly on this particular issue in relation to some of the other aspects of the health care reform law.

During the past five years, Health and Human Services has set up compliance and ethics guidance for nursing facilities, Medicare prescription plans and Medicare Advantage plans. However, many of the big issues that affect providers have yet to be touched, those issues affecting facilities and health care professionals alike.

At this point, it’s likely that most health care companies have already taken steps on their own to institute compliance and ethics guidelines within their organizations, knowing that the time was coming when it would be mandated by the federal government. However, these types of programs can be challenging to design and implement.

There are many complicated issues that need to be navigated during the process. Because of the complexity of the issues and the fact that Health and Human Services has not fully stepped in yet to ensure that all organizations have those programs in place, there’s still a chance that some organizations are not yet following proper compliance and ethics protocols under the Affordable Care Act.

If you believe ethics and compliance to be issues that must be addressed within your organization, work with the knowledgeable New York health care attorneys at Buttaci Leardi & Werner, LLC.

Tagged with: Affordable Care Act, health care attorneys, health care reform law

• Posted on: Apr 21 2015