The state’s health department is requesting a one-time $386.1 million cash pump into behavioral and public health services, with more than 84% of the deposit going into a new state-operated psychiatric complex.

The Senate Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee hosted its first hearing for the Fiscal Year 2023 budget this month.

In the governor’s $74.1 billion proposed budget for the new fiscal year, $325 million would be infused into a new state psychiatric facility complex, which would replace the 66-year-old Hawthorn Center and the 43-year-old Walter P. Reuther Psychiatric Hospital as a single campus.

“This new facility will be used to provide treatment, care and services to children and adults with severe [Read More]

By EWA MATUSZEWSKI
I was recently asked to comment on best practices for physicians and Advance Practice Providers (APP) considering the purchase of new technology for their independent practice. With 2022 still largely ahead of us, it’s good timing for a topic that may be on your business to-do list this year. Let me first start with an admitted bias. I love technology and have always been an early adopter, whether it was a Palm Pilot, BlackBerry, smartphone, Kindle, iPads or videoconferencing (long before the pandemic). Yet, I know that purchasing tech on a broader scale, namely software for healthcare practices, can be difficult and user non-friendly. (Well, perhaps that last [Read More]

By ROLF LOWE
In the past few months there have been two Federal District Court rulings addressing lawsuits brought in part on an alleged disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and/or Protected Health Information (PHI) protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In the rulings, the Courts have relied on a recent Supreme Court ruling on a case involving a class action lawsuit alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) issued in the spring of 2021.

The Supreme Court case, titled Ramirez v. TransUnion, arose out the named plaintiff, Sergio Ramirez, being placed on a list maintained by the Treasury’s Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) [Read More]

By JEREMY BELANGER
On Oct. 24, 2018, the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (EKRA) was enacted. Broadly speaking, EKRA prohibits soliciting, receiving, paying, or offering “any remuneration (including any kickback, bribe, or rebate) directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, in cash or in kind,” for referring or to induce a referral to a recovery home, clinical treatment facility, or laboratory, as those terms are defined in EKRA. While modeled after the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b(b), EKRA applies more broadly to any public or private plan or contract providing medical benefits, items, or services. EKRA is a criminal statute enforced by the U.S. Attorney General. A violation of EKRA [Read More]

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

MDHHS: Masks No Longer Needed At Schools, Indoors

Department of Health and Human Services officials announced that it is dropping the suggestion that masks be worn in schools or indoors as COVID-19 cases continue to fall.

The health department reported 4,271 new cases and 312 new deaths of COVID-19 over a two-day period this month. The two-day average of cases was 2,136, marking a decline in new cases across the state.

The report prompted the health department to revise guidance for wearing masks indoors to prevent the spread of the virus.

“This is good news for Michigan,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer [Read More]

This story courtesy of MIRS, a Lansing-based news and information service.

The U.S. Supreme Court stopped the President Joe Biden administration’s vaccination-or-testing requirement on the nation’s largest employers.

The court allowed, however, the administration’s mandate for most health care workers at federally funded health care facilities to continue.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh were the only two justices in the majority on both orders while liberal Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would have allowed the workplace requirements to continue.

In the blistering dissent, the justices said, “When we are wise, we know not to displace the judgments of experts, acting within the sphere Congress marked out and under Presidential control, to deal with emergency conditions.

“Today [Read More]