The USDC for the Western District of Pennsylvania has issued a significant False Claims Act Whistleblower Opinion in the case of U.S. ex rel. Singh v. Bradford Regional Medical Center. The False Claims Act case rested on a lease arrangement between certain physicians and Bradford Regional Medical Center, which the court ruled violated the Stark…

Defining and disciplining disruptive physicians has been a difficult problem for hospital administration and the medical staff for quite some time now, long enough for the Joint Commission to actually require leadership standard LD.3.10 beginning in 2009. Medical staffs have frequently been torn between protecting their members, who are frequently high performing physicians, while maintaining appropriate…

The Social Security Act requires CMS to provide annual estimates to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) for both the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Conversion Factor (SCF) and the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR). According to the letter just released by Jonathan Blum, Deputy Administrator and Director for CMS, the 2012 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Conversion Factor…

The Mississippi State Appeals Court affirmed a summary judgment decision by a Mississippi State Court in the case of C. Jake Lambert, Jr. M.D. v. Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi, Inc. and Baptist Memorial Health Services, Inc.   Dr. Lambert was a medical staff member of Baptist Memorial Hospital (Hospital) and an employee of Baptist Memorial…

In Sabharwal v. Mount Sinai Medical Center, Queens Hospital Center, and Won Chee, the plaintiff alleged employment discrimination in that she was subjected to a hostile work environment and unlawful discrimination by not being reappointed as the Assistant Director of Anesthesia on account of age, sex and disability. The plaintiff requested production of certain records…

Schueller v. Goddard is a fairly typical hospital staffing scenario. Dr. Schueller was an independent contractor with an emergency services group, which in turn had an exclusive service contract with Drew Memorial Hospital in Arkansas. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a grant of summary judgment by the District Court in favor of the hospital…

Contibuted by Paul J. Welk

pwelk@tuckerlaw.com; 412.594.5536

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has issued a Notice of Final Determination, marking the first civil money penalty issued by HHS for HIPAA Privacy Rule violations, finding that Cignet Health of Prince George’s County, Md., (Cignet) violated the…

Eric Liederman of Kaiser Permanente gave an interesting talk at HIMSS11 on protecting privacy without harming patients.  It is not uncommon for many audit trails to be full of non-essential information and not helpful in investigating security and privacy breaches.  The HIPAA Security Rule requires, among other things, a security risk analysis and the implementation of…

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