Category: Legal & Regulatory Issues

States are rooting out alleged “fake” nurses and penalizing them for buying fraudulent nursing school transcripts and diplomas from three now-shuttered Florida schools. 

Hospitals and the physicians who practice in their emergency rooms do not see eye to eye on the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed rule to ban noncompete clauses in employment contracts. 

New legislation pushed by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont would end facility fees charged at freestanding offices and clinics away from hospitals and create stricter reporting requirements for facility fees, sfgate.com reported March 13.

The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Rite Aid, claiming the retail pharmacy chain filled hundreds of thousands of “unlawful” prescriptions of controlled substances, including opioids, from May 2014 to June 2019. 

Former nurse Alec Ramirez, 32, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and had his license revoked after he was convicted of stealing controlled substances from Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, Kan.

Medicaid fraud units recovered $415.7 million from criminal convictions and $641.5 million in civil settlements in 2022, according to a report from HHS’ Office of the Inspector General.

The Washington Senate approved a bill to raise Astria Toppenish (Wash.) Hospital’s Medicaid inpatient service reimbursement rates to 120 percent of the Medicaid fee schedule and outpatient reimbursement rates to 200 percent. 

Federal investigators indicted the former CEO of a medical device company on March 9 in connection to a scheme that involved creating and selling a “non-functioning dummy” device that was implanted in patients with chronic pain, according to the Justic…

Randall Tobler, MD, the former CEO of Memphis, Mo.-based Scotland County Hospital, sued the hospital over slander and defamation allegations, according to a March 9 report from KTVO News.

A pair of Pennsylvania state representatives have drafted legislation designed to prevent abrupt hospital closures by doubling the time in which a health system must notify state and local agencies of a planned closure.