A committee of the U.S. House of Representatives is moving forward with a bill that would extend Medicare telehealth provisions for two years after the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, but the legislation lacks features to deal with fraud and abuse.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported an indictment of a physician in Paducah, Kentucky for causing the filing of false claims to the Medicare program with the help of telehealth. The physician is liable for only $560,000 in penalties, but the announcement again underscores the department’s crackdown on telehealth fraud, regardless of the dollar value of the fraud.
Even as new waves of COVID-19 cause less direct disruption in the delivery of health care, the ongoing pandemic leaves a dramatically altered landscape for medical devices in its wake. The RBC Global Healthcare Conference revealed trends that will continue to reshape the utilization of medical technology and delivery of health care, while industry leaders drilled down into the details in a focused panel discussion. All agreed: the pandemic catapulted telemedicine and remote monitoring ahead five or more years, a hybrid delivery system with greater fluctuations in volume will emerge, devices that facilitate the movement of care out of the hospital to home or outpatient settings will remain in high demand and patient-centered control of health care will continue to attract additional industries into health care markets.
Digital health company Recora Inc. has surfaced from stealth mode with $20 million in series A funding to advance its comprehensive care management vision for heart disease patients.
The Ernst & Young Pulse of the Industry 2021 report outlined several ways med-tech companies can benefit from fundamental changes in business wrought by the pandemic to build a stronger foundation for the future. While the need for more agile supply chains and the drive to measure social and environmental impact as well as financial metrics have affected all economic sectors, COVID-19 transformed the med-tech industry in specific ways that could have long-lasting impact.
The frequent calls for an expansion of telemedicine have come with relatively hushed advisories about the potential for fraud, concerns that have been borne out by an indictment recently returned by a federal grand jury in New Jersey. A company that presented itself as a provider of telemedicine services has been charged with filing $784 million in false claims for unnecessary durable medical equipment.
BERLIN – The German government has just made $3.6 billion available to the Future of Hospitals Act (Krankenhauszukunftsgesetz, KHZG), through the liquidity reserve of the health fund in order to support public hospitals with digital transformation. Besides this government cash injection, an additional $1.6 billion will be made available through co-funding by the German federal states, the 16 Länder. In total, German hospitals will get a $5.2 billion funding to boost digitization.
As is the case with many national governments, the U.S. federal government does not routinely measure its activities in the calendar year, but we at BioWorld don’t share that outlook. CY 2020 was odd in more ways than one from a regulatory standpoint, and thus we offer our version of a regulatory top 10 for a year that might not look much better in the rear-view mirror than it has looked as a current event.
Telehealth has been topical in the U.S. for several years now, but the COVID-19 pandemic lent new urgency to the question of Medicare coverage. However, there are a number of related enforcement issues that could dampen adoption and increase the legal risk for both health care professionals and developers of telehealth-related products.
As Johnson & Johnson (J&J) made public the launch of a phase III trial with its COVID-19 vaccine, officials from the company and others at the virtual Biopharm America meeting discussed modes of innovation in the pandemic era.
