Texas has a shortage of facilities needed to meet residents’ psychiatric needs. The state has suffered from years of underfunding in this critical area of healthcare. As of March 2021, the state’s 10 public psychiatric hospitals reported a waitlist of almost 1,500...
Hospital merger and acquisition (M&A) deals continue to thrive through 2021. Just this month, Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare announced the sale of five hospitals to Steward Health Care. Those with information on the deal expect the billion-dollar deal to close in...
Leaders behind what would have been a billion-dollar healthcare merger recently announced plans to walk away from the deal. The merger of the two community focused healthcare systems would have resulted in an $11.5 billion system. The announcement provides an...
The feds are aggressively pursuing allegations of healthcare fraud related to relaxed regulations and incentives to help address the pandemic. In a recent example, the government charged 14 people with healthcare fraud related to the pandemic. They claim that those...
The pandemic forced us to reevaluate how we work. In an effort to reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19, we shifted a large portion of our workforce to remote status. This provided an opportunity not just to increase the safety of our workforce, but also to see if a...
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently accused a surgical group out of Texas of illegal collusion with competitors. According to the feds, the group agreed not to poach senior-level employees from competing practices. The group is composed of physicians who own and...
In what the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General is calling the largest audit penalty every imposed on a Medicare Advantage company, the feds have recently completed and an audit and are calling on the company to pay over $200 million back in Medicare...
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced updates to its Phase 2 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Audit Program. These audits aim to check for an entity’s compliance with certain requirements. The...
Medical practices depend on relationships with hospital systems. An abrupt end to privileges within a hospital can have a catastrophic impact on the group and the patients they serve. Unfortunately, these situations are not uncommon. Most recently, a group out of St....
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, and offices of state attorneys general along with the Canadian Competition Bureau, European Commission Directorate General for Competition, and U.K.’s Competition and Markets...
