Compliance Today (January 2021) - The newly created Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a joint alert with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S..
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) has been vigorously enforcing patients’ right to access their medical records under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
[1] According to an October 9 notice, the OCR has settled nine such investigations in its HIPAA Right of Access Initiative.
[2]
In a blog post
[3] put together by Waller law firm professionals, the initiative is discussed alongside other rules affecting an individual’s right to access their records, specifically the 21
st Century Cures Act’s interoperability and information-blocking rules:
“Under these Rules, a patient’s request for records (as well as others) must be provided in compliance with the Information Blocking Rule requirements or the Health IT developer and healthcare providers risk enforcement…[or potentially be subject to] penalties of up to $1 million per violation.”
Press release content from Business Wire. The AP news staff was not involved in its creation.
Strategic Healthcare Compliance Advisor Lisa Murtha Joins Moses & Singer
January 7, 2021 GMT
NEW YORK (BUSINESS WIRE) Jan 7, 2021
Moses & Singer LLP is pleased to announce the arrival of F. Lisa Murtha (Lisa) as the firm’s newest partner to its Healthcare practice group. A strategic healthcare compliance advisor, Murtha brings more than three decades of healthcare, research, billing, fraud and abuse, HIPAA privacy, and compliance experience to the firm. She joins Moses & Singer after spending more than three years as Senior Managing Director at Ankura Consulting.
A Houston-area physician was sentenced to seven years in prison for healthcare fraud that resulted in the deaths of multiple patients due to opioid overdoses, as well as the death of an entire family in a car accident involving one of the patients.
The physician, Rezik Saqer, prescribed powerful opioid painkillers to vulnerable patients and then required they undergo unnecessary and expensive procedures that he then charged to healthcare providers. According to a Department of Justice news release,
[1] Saqer made fraudulent claims of at least $14 million. He was ordered to pay restitution of $5 million, along with the prison sentence.
Healthcare fraud is a huge problem, and the recent Sackler case
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) will be accepting comments on a revised version of its Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) expected to be finalized sometime next year. “To facilitate review, revised text has been highlighted in yellow throughout the document to identify significant changes. A brief comment explanation of the change also is provided,” the agency said in a Dec. 14
Federal Register notice. In an email to stakeholders, NSF Policy Head Jean Feldman said the draft incorporates “the revised [2 C.F.R. § 200]: Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Award that was effective November 12, 2020,” noting that “we have not highlighted the revised references throughout the document.” Feldman also said NSF award conditions currently apply “if there is a discrepancy” between them and the revised 2 C.F.R. § 200.