Former U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma is bullish on a lot. Speaking at the Home Care 100 conference Tuesday, she expressed enthusiasm for a new era of data-tracking and technology, as well as value-based care, Medicare Advantage and hospital at home. Most noteworthy to the attendees, however, was her […]
Category: Regulation
Four home care operators in Portland, Maine, were indicted on counts of wage fixing and labor market allocation charges, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday. And there could be a lot more where that came from. On a webinar last week, Littler Mendelson lawyers covered five legal trends to watch in 2022. Three […]
Certificate of Need (CON) laws for home health agencies vary by state. In some states, there are no restrictions. In others, there are strict restrictions on how many home health and hospice providers are allowed to operate. There are also ones with CON laws in hospice, and not in home health – or vice versa. […]
Aveanna Healthcare Holdings (Nasdaq: AVAH) has been bullish on its plans to expand into a leading provider of senior home health services since it went public in April. Prior to its IPO, the company had been more of a pediatric provider, but it has aggressively acquired new assets since, realizing the vision it laid out […]
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday listened to arguments regarding the issue that has been top of mind for most home-based care providers for the past several months: vaccine mandates. No decision has been made on whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule, nor the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) mandate, […]
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulation requiring workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing has been revived. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a stay on the OSHA vaccine mandate late Friday. The mandate had been paused since Nov. 6, challenged […]
On the last day of November, a nationwide injunction was issued by a federal judge in Louisiana to freeze the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). On Wednesday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that the injunction should not have been applied nationwide. Instead, […]
On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to block New York state’s requirement that health care workers must be vaccinated against COVID-19. For home-based care providers, the move is unlikely to change much for now – either in New York or elsewhere. A similar challenge in the state of Maine had previously reached the Supreme Court, […]
In 2013, the Obama administration included live-in caregivers in U.S. wage and overtime law. Previously, those caregivers – along with salaried workers – had been exempt from overtime provisions. The administration’s goal at the time was to raise caregiver wages. That has certainly happened, albeit in a small number of cases. Mostly, though, the Obama-era […]
The initial health care worker vaccine mandate laid out by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) was a cause for confusion for some home health providers when it was announced officially in early November. Now that a nationwide injunction has been issued by a federal judge with key deadlines rapidly approaching, that confusion […]