Physician Law Blog

As a result of the Congressional failure to yet adopt a “physician payment fix,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the efforts it will be taking beginning on April 15th, 2015 to alleviate the impact of the 21% decrease in payments required by current law. Meanwhile, CMS will be imposing a 10 day hold on new claims to attempt to minimize the impact if Congress does take action to avert the payment decrease. The following excerpt is from the MLN Connects Provider eNews – Special Edition dated April 13, 2015.

Susan McAndrew, Office of Civil Rights deputy director for health information privacy spoke at the HIMSS Conference on 2/24/14. As the OCR already made known, it plans to resume its HIPAA compliance audit program this year following the Pilot HIPAA Audit program in 2012. Now, more information is available on the progress towards the start of those audits. Ms. McAndrew addressed the topic, noting that “hopefully in the coming months you’ll see actual activity that will start the audit process.”