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By George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law If you are contacted by a Florida Department of Health investigator, did you know that you cannot be required to make a statement or give information that can be used against you? If you are being investigated you have a right to refuse to speak with an investigator pursuant to the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the equivalent rights given by the Florida Constitution, Article 1, Section 9...

By George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law In Florida, You DO NOT Have to Speak to an Investigator! Despite mailing out hundreds of thousands of postcards and letters to physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, and psychologists throughout Florida, we continue to receive calls from new clients and from potential clients, after they have already spoken to and made critical harmful admissions against their own interests to investigators. In Flo...

By George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law When Was the Last Time You Checked Your Addresses on File with CMS/Medicare? When was the last time you checked all four of the addresses you should have on file for any individual or any group/company Medicare number you may have? The consequences of not doing so can be severe. In addition to your mailing or correspondence address , and your billing address, you also should have a physical address tha...

by George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M. Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law If you are scheduled to appear for an informal hearing before the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage & Family Therapy & Mental Health Counseling, there are a number of facts that you will want to know in order to be properly prepared. This article will cover many of them. Limited Circumstances for Informal Administrative Hearing First, you should understand that you will only be at ...

By George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law The Internal Revenue Service IRS is now alerting hospitals that it has completed the review of their medical resident Federal Insurance Contributions Act FICA refund claims. The first hospitals to be notified may receive their FICA refund checks as early as May 2012. FICA deductions are a percentage of the employee's wages that are withheld to help fund both the Social Security and the Medicare Program...

by George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M. Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law If you are scheduled to appear for an informal hearing before the Florida Board of Pharmacy, there are a number of facts that you will want to know in order to be properly prepared. This article will cover many of them. Limited Circumstances for Informal Administrative Hearing First, you should understand that you will only be at an informal hearing in which you appear before the Board of Pharmacy itsel...

By George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law The United States Department of Health and Human Services HHS Office for Civil Rights OCR has reached a settlement with Phoenix Cardiac Surgery PCS over alleged Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 HIPAA violations. The settlement was reached on April 17, 2012 and requires PSC to pay OCR $100,000 and enter into a one-year corrective action plan CAP . The Resolution Agreement and ...

By George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law Three U.S. Senators have teamed up to request an evaluation of state medical boards. This bipartisan effort was initiated at the end of February 2012 when Senators Charles Grassley R-Iowa , Orrin Hatch R-Utah and Max Baucus D-Mont. sent a letter to the director of the Office of the Inspector General OIG for the Department of Health and Human Services HHS . In the letter the senators ask the OIG to laun...

by George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M. Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law If you are scheduled to appear for an informal hearing before the Florida Board of Dentistry, there are a number of facts that you will want to know in order to be properly prepared. This article will cover many of them. Limited Circumstances for Informal Administrative Hearing First, you should understand that you will only be at an informal hearing in which you appear before the Board of Denstistry it...

By George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law Over 100 doctors, nurses and other health professionals were arrested on charges relating to Medicare fraud by federal agents on May 2, 2012. The arrests were made in seven cities nationwide, but more than half took place in South Florida. This was a multi-agency attack on health providers involving law enforcement agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI , Department of Health and Human Ser...