Legal & Regulatory Issues

Accretive Health has refuted the Minnesota Attorney General's allegations that the debt collection agency denied access to care and pressured patients at bedside to pay medical bills out of pocket.

In the midst of a shortage on anesthetic drugs, the American Society of Anesthesiologists is asking the Senate to include specific language in the shortage provisions of the FDA's Safety and Innovation Act.

Consultants have advised some large employers they can save money by dropping health insurance in 2014 and sending employees to buy insurance through health insurance exchanges, according to a report by congressional Republicans reported in FOX Business.

Lafayette (La.) General Medical Center will close its eight-bed pediatric intensive care unit, according to a New England Cable News report.

The U.S. District Court in Fort Wayne, Ind., has granted the U.S. Department of Justice an additional six months to decide whether it will intervene as co-plaintiff in a whistleblower suit against Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems, according to a…

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs announced yesterday it has suspended compliance evaluations for hospitals and other providers that only fall under the federal contractor umbrella because they do business with TRICARE, according to report in AHA News Now.

For the third time, St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson, Miss., has been denied approval to move 71 patients to a $121 million hospital it wants to build, according to a Clarion Ledger report.

Congressman Pete Stark (D-Calif.) has asked CMS to investigate Accretive Health, one of the country's largest medical debt collectors, after Minnesota's attorney general sued the company for patient privacy violations, according to a New York Times report.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., and one of its surgeons have resolved patient dumping allegations with the Office of Inspector General, according to a Tennessean report.

Two New Hampshire House bills that would have eased the certificate of need process for hospitals have been rewritten by the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to reaffirm the CON process, but only for five years, according to a…