At a recent Cabinet meeting, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy reportedly said he expected Trumprx to probably go live within 10 days. That was Jan. 29, two days before HHS was once again forced to shut down many of its activities due to a congressional gridlock over a fiscal 2026 appropriations package to keep the department and several others open beyond Jan. 30.
A Jan. 28 report on Medicare spending on lab tests indicated that spending on many types of tests flattened between 2022 and 2024, but spending on genetic tests rose 20% between 2023 and 2024 to $3.6 billion. While the report does not specifically call out fraud as a driver of spending, the U.S. Department of Justice posted a Jan. 26 press release identifying a case of Medicare gene testing fraud that amounted to $52 million, just one of several recent examples of this kind of fraud.
The Office of Inspector General issued a report stating that the Medicare program could save “tens of millions of dollars” in a single year on continuous glucose monitors and associated supplies if the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services acted to apply price pressure on suppliers.
Exactech Inc., of Gainesville, Fla., decided it will not subject itself to a 10-year corporate integrity agreement with the Office of Inspector General, an understandable move given that the company no longer intends to do business in the U.S. under its old brand.
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a new report that the U.S. Medicare program had overpaid a group of providers of durable medical equipment (DME) by nearly $23 million between 2018 and 2024, an amount that is a significant drop from prior years, but which OIG said calls for further reforms for the Medicare DME program.
Physician ownership of medical device manufacturers can be tricky stuff where the Anti-Kickback Statute is concerned, but the Office of Inspector General recently declared it had no problem with one such arrangement due to the physician’s ratio of ownership of the company.
The U.S. Office of Inspector General said in a recent report that independent testing labs should be required to develop emergency preparedness plans for public health emergencies, a move that would affect industry giants such as Laboratory Corporation of America and Quest Diagnostics Inc.
The U.S. Office of Inspector General posted an analysis of Medicare spending on skin substitutes, remarking that the data suggest a disproportionate use of these products for patients enrolled in fee-for-service (FFS) care.
The Office of Inspector General recently reported that billings for remote patient monitoring eclipsed the $500 million mark in 2024, but the agency stated that more scrutiny will be necessary going forward to keep waste, fraud and abuse at bay.
Companies in the life sciences must tread carefully when it comes to the Anti-Kickback Statute, but a recent advisory opinion by the Office of Inspector General lends little clarity on the point.
