Donation of Electronic Health Records Systems. In August of 2006, Congress passed legislation that would allow certain eligible donors to contribute up to 85% of the total cost of an electronic health records system (“EHR”) to physicians. Ordinarily, where a referral relationship exists between the parties, this type of donation would be prohibited as it [...]

This month, Medicare is launching a pilot program in South Carolina where it will offer personal health records to about 100,000 Medicare recipients. The goal of the project is to provide patients with their own comprehensive personal health records which include information gathered over a number of years from a variety of sources. The program [...]

Following the lead of the Medicare program, several major private insurers are moving to exclude payments for clear medical errors that occur while a patient is hospitalized. Aetna is adding to its new and renewal contracts that it will not pay for 28 different events included on a list of “mistakes that should never happen,” [...]

    The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on January 14 issued two advisory opinions related to permissible gainsharing arrangements between hospitals and physicians.[1] One of the arrangements dealt with a group of cardiac surgeons and the other dealt with an anesthesiology group – each of which were already on staff at the hospital. [...]