By ANDREW SPARKS
In March 2020, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which provided $2.2 trillion in economic relief. The Act was designed to quickly get money to millions of Americans suffering from the pandemic. Unfortunately, this relief provided ample opportunity for fraud. As the COVID pandemic begins to ease, the Department of Justice’s efforts to prosecute this COVID-19 fraud is intensifying. To date, the Department has charged nearly 500 defendants with criminal offenses for attempted fraud in excess of $550 million. The focus of the prosecutions have been schemes targeting the Paycheck Protection Program, Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, Unemployment Insurance programs, and relief [Read More]

By ALLAN DOBZYNIAK, MD
At a recent meeting of the Wayne County Medical Society Editorial Board it was mentioned that today’s Wayne State University medical students have a greater interest in the idea of “social justice.” I initially assumed this was a positive change for the profession. But later I became unsure why this might be the case. Without a clear definition of “social justice” it is impossible to conclude whether this should be understood as something new, something positive or even possibly negative. This then raises the questions of how this unclear and undefined concept might apply to healthcare and its present and future physicians. Further, if “social justice” has [Read More]

Lansing Lines is presented in cooperation with MIRS, a Lansing-based news and information service.

Shirkey Shows His Work On COVID Immunity Calculations
Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R-Clarklake) explained his calculation that Michigan residents are already at 70% immunity to COVID, if you’re counting “broad-based community immunity” rather than just shots in arms, in an interview with WRFH radio this week.

The state reports that more than 660,000 Michiganders have had the disease and recovered.

“We are greater than 50% of eligible adults (who) have at least received one shot and then — based on studies from Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, they all have done their own independent studies suggesting that states’ numbers [Read More]

By JANE SPENCER & CHRISTINA JEWETT
More than 3,600 U.S. healthcare workers perished in the first year of the pandemic, according to “Lost on the Frontline,” a 12-month investigation by The Guardian and KHN to track such deaths.

Lost on the Frontline is the most complete accounting of U.S. healthcare worker deaths. The federal government has not comprehensively tracked this data. But calls are mounting for the Biden administration to undertake a count as the KHN/Guardian project comes to a close.

The project, which tracked who died and why, provides a window into the workings — and failings — of the U.S. health system during the COVID-19 pandemic. One key finding: Two-thirds of [Read More]

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration has eased numerous COVID-related restrictions on business sectors and other activities the past two months, and in many cases, the outbreaks for the corresponding sector increased since then, according to a MIRS review of weekly outbreak data reported to the state.
The outbreak categories that encompass restaurants and bars, some youth sports, retail, exercise facilities, indoor community exposures and social gatherings have all increased by various amounts since restrictions eased on those respective industries or functions.

That doesn’t include outbreaks tied to K-12 school settings, which were given the goal but not the mandate by Whitmer to resume some in-person learning by March 1. Almost all districts in [Read More]

By EWA MATUSZEWSKI
Did you catch the oxymoron in the headline? Reactive disaster planning – or reactive planning of any sort – of course is not planning. But writing this so close to what we can only hope was and is the worst disaster of our lifetime, we mut be honest and admit that our responses to the myriad disasters wrought by the pandemic were rarely planned. Some of us may have been quicker to act than others, more willing to admit that indeed a crisis of heretofore unknown proportions was upon us. But still, we reacted. We had not adequately planned.

In Michigan, we were at the epicenter of our nation’s [Read More]

By DUSTIN WACHLER, ESQ.
Prior to the COVID-19 public health emergency, Medicare coverage of telehealth was restricted to a limited set of services provided via interactive audio and video telecommunications systems between a healthcare provider at a “distant site” and a beneficiary at an “originating site” as defined by Medicare. In order to qualify as an “originating site,” the beneficiary was required to be in a physician office, healthcare facility, or other authorized site located in either a county outside a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) or a rural Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) in a rural census tract. In addition to Medicare requirements, telehealth arrangements must also comply with state telemedicine [Read More]

By RALPH Z. LEVY JR.
Taxpayer losses in two recent Tax Court cases serve as reminders that physician and other incorporated medical practice groups should take care in the “zero out” approach to the payment of compensation to the group’s owners and that success in this area may depend on whether the practice is organized as a “C” corporation or has elected to be taxed as an “S” corporation and if the practice group is owned by one or more professionals.

Regardless of whether the practice group is organized under local law as a professional corporation (PC) or a professional association (PA), is taxed as a “C” corporation or as an “S” [Read More]

By ALLAN DOBZYNIAK, MD
So many of the organizations alleging to represent a consensus of individual physicians simply do not. The narrative that equates all physicians with the organizations that claim to represent them is just wrong. Unfortunately, this narrative has become repetitive and increasingly common.

Consider that the American Medical Association has only a membership of around 12 percent of practicing physicians; hence, it does not represent the majority. It has unquestionably become increasingly political in its views. The organization and leadership have moved to the progressive left. Priorities such as “systemic racism,” “social justice” and “equity” have been engaged to clarify its organizational identity of “wokeness.” It has recently dismissed [Read More]