As healthcare providers continue to fight the coronavirus outbreak, many practices are suffering major disruptions due to the cancellation of elective surgeries and office visits, among other things. In an effort to lessen the financial hardships facing these providers, on March 28 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced an expansion of its

On March 30, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued blanket waivers of certain requirements of the federal physician self-referral law (Stark Law), retroactive to March 1, in response to the COVID-19 crisis. A detailed discussion of the waivers may be found here.

Several of the provisions in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) passed by the Senate on March 25 relate to laboratory diagnostic testing for the COVID-19 virus.

Within Division A of the CARES Act, titled “Keeping Workers Paid and Employed, Health Care System Enhancements, and Economic Stabilization,” there are four sections

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released an updated edition of its Medicare Learning Network Telehealth Services booklet. The publication, targeted at Medicare fee-for-service providers, outlines Medicare’s telehealth reimbursement policies for 2020. There is also a short summary of the expanded telehealth benefits available to Medicare beneficiaries during the current COVID-19 outbreak,

Rivkin Radler has launched a Coronavirus Resource Center on the firm’s website. All of the firm’s COVID-19-related articles and blog posts, across our many practice groups, are now compiled in one place for easy reference. We’ll continue adding to the Resource Center as the pandemic continues.

Responding to the Coronavirus public health emergency, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) has waived certain requirements of the Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), including requirements relating to the Stark Self-Referral Law (“Stark”), the HIPAA privacy regulations and the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). This action was taken

On March 17, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) announced the issuance of a new emergency regulation requiring insurance companies in the state to waive cost-sharing, including deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance, for in-network telehealth visits, whether or not related to coronavirus. The new regulation will “encourage New Yorkers to seek medical attention

In an effort to limit the spread of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on March 17 announced the expansion of Medicare coverage for telehealth nationwide, effective immediately. CMS will temporarily pay clinicians to provide telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries residing anywhere in the U.S. so that those who

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has created a “Current Emergencies” page on its website that compiles links to the agency’s recent press releases and guidance regarding coronavirus in one place. CMS has already issued more than 30 press releases and guidance documents in March alone and there are too many to summarize,

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) have finalized two highly anticipated rules that are intended to give patients “unprecedented safe, secure access to their health data.”

ONC will establish a certification process for application programming interfaces (APIs) that will meet certain interoperability