HIPAA Blog

[ Monday, January 31, 2005 ]

 

Slightly OT: Hospital Compliance Program guidelines. HHS has recently announced, and will publish in today's Federal Register, some guidance to hospitals who have instituted or plan to institute compliance programs. Actually, this was originally published back in the summer, but has been updated and republished. The information generally describes steps and safeguards hospitals should put into their compliance programs to prevent fraud, abuse, improper billing, HIPAA or EMTALA violations, or violations of Stark and other federal restrictions and requirements applicable to participants in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Most of the new information relates to physician compensation arrangements, which is one of the biggest vectors for compliance failures in the health care industry. The guidance isn't law or regulation, so it's not binding on Medicare/Medicaid participants, but is makes for interesting reading for anyone who has to do business in the health care arena, particularly as background information on the types of arrangements that can cause headaches.

Hat tip to Susan Koch, who had the first law firm alert I've seen on the guidance.

Jeff [9:57 AM]

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