Insights

Washington – August 15, 2024: The 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 42 Crowell & Moring lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 29 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

Washington – June 6, 2024: Crowell & Moring earned 78 rankings for 67 lawyers, as well as 41 national and statewide practice area rankings, in the Chambers USA 2024 guide. The rankings are driven by independent interviews of clients and lawyers at peer firms.

On May 10, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) published a Final Rule that, for the first time, imposes national minimum nurse staffing requirements for nursing homes. Specifically, the standard adopted by CMS requires minimum staffing of 3.48 hours per resident day (“HPRD”), as discussed in more detail below. CMS estimates that the new requirements will cost facilities $43 billion over the next 10 years, which is more than the $40.6 billion cost that CMS estimated for Proposed Rule of 3.0 HPRD. Some industry sources estimate that less than 25% of nursing facilities across the country currently meet the full scope of staffing standards laid out in CMS’ Final Rule due to a myriad of factors including labor shortages and increasing wage pressures. Indeed, the impact and cost of these staffing requirements will vary significantly by state. For example, CMS reported that at least one state will need to increase certain staff by nearly 96% to meet the minimum standards, while other states already meet the requirements.

On Friday April 26th, the Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) released regulations under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act[1] (“Section 1557”), the nondiscrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act (the “Final Rule”). Promulgated almost two years after OCR’s proposed rule for Section 1557, the Final Rule restores critical protections for LGBTQI+ and pregnant individuals and significantly expands the scope of activity that is subject to Section 1557’s nondiscrimination provisions, in both instances by removing limitations to the scope of Section 1557 that went into effect during the Trump Administration.

In the latest sign that federal enforcers remain focused on increasing antitrust enforcement, last Thursday, the Justice Department (DOJ), Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed an online portal, HealthyCompetition.gov, to encourage the public to submit reports on potential anticompetitive and monopolistic conduct in the healthcare sector.  The initiative seeks to address concerns that such behavior may affect healthcare affordability and quality, and employee wages. 

Changes in the health care delivery and payment system are underway to “bend the cost curve” and improve patient outcomes. However, the legal and compliance risks to any entity offering services or products paid for or reimbursed with government dollars have not abated.

Please join us for the 2018 Inova Discovery Series: Early Stage Investing in Health Technology Event on Thursday, June 21, 2018.

Accountable care in both the public and private sector have continued to grow over the past several years, ushering in more experience and evidence on what is working and ways to continue evolving accountable care models. The Sixth National Accountable Care Congress (www.ACOCongress.com), November 16-18 in Los Angeles, will provide an unprecedented opportunity to discuss remaining barriers to widespread accountable care implementation, strategies to overcome them, and policies to encourage the continued growth and sustainability of the accountable care movement.

Our health care landscape is rapidly transforming. As the health care space has become more digitized and more reliant on technology than ever before, artificial intelligence (AI), telehealth services, data analysis, and medical devices have become drivers of our health care system. Likewise, value-based care is becoming increasingly popular among delivery systems, leaving accountable care organizations (ACOs) to adhere to changing federal compliance requirements. The burden falls on health care entities to remain up-to-date on how care is evolving as federal and state compliance regulations and privacy concerns continue to develop.

This episode is the first part in a miniseries with Crowell Health Solutions, which is a strategic consulting firm that Crowell & Moring launched earlier this year to help healthcare organizations and technology companies transform health care by improving patient care and health outcomes, advancing health equity, and lowering health care costs through solutions like digital health innovations and value-based healthcare models.

In this episode, hosts Payal Nanavati and Joe Records talk to Troy Barsky and Roma Sharma about their reflections on the first year of implementation of new regulations implementing the major fraud and abuse statutes — the Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) — including discussing challenges, opportunities, and outstanding questions about the new exceptions and safe harbors for value-based care.

Payers, Providers, and Patients – Oh My! Is Crowell & Moring’s biweekly health care podcast, discussing legal and regulatory issues that affect health care entities’ in-house counsel, executives, and investors. In this episode, hosts Payal Nanavati and Joe Records talk with Troy Barsky and Alice Hall-Partyka about how recent litigation challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act may impact providers and payers. The discussion focuses on the authority for innovative health care models and important fraud and abuse provisions that were enacted in the ACA.