Over-Regulation Has Criminalized the Practice of Medicine

[amorphous]

This criminalization of everyday life is not just insanely costly and insanely counter-productive--it's insanely punitive.

The average person has little exposure to the criminalization of everyday enterprise in America via over-regulation and outsized penalties for even accidental violations of rules and regulations. One field that continues to be burdened with excessive/counter-productive regulations and outsized penalties is the practice of medicine. I received the following email from a physician correspondent:

"As you will see, physicians have to deal with the federal government's increasingly crazy and copious rules (like which patients they can screen for disease and how often).

The following is an email ad I received for an expensive service that provides no benefit to the ill and injured of America. It's bureaucratic nonsense."

Here is the email ad:

Can you afford a $1.1 million penalty and a 50-year exclusion from Medicare? That's what one New Jersey provider is facing. And he's not alone. In the last couple of months a facility in Utah is now under a 30-year exclusion, and a New York physician is now excluded from Medicare for five years.

These penalties and exclusions not only affect those providers that are intentionally fraudulent. Even an innocent mistake can land you in serious legal and financial hot water. Being tagged as "excluded" by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) can crush your practice -- especially considering the new guidelines that went into effect just a couple of days ago (on Feb. 13th).

Tomorrow, a leading healthcare attorney will walk you through the new exclusionary rules that just took effect so that you can really understand what will keep you off of the OIG's hit list.

Here are just a few of the practical, easy-to-implement tactics you'll receive by attending this 60-minute online training:

--Determine specifically who you should screen (individuals and entities) and how often

--Avoid being placed on the list for lack of compliance if there is a match on your team

--Find out what other legal actions can have collateral damage resulting in exclusion

--Learn how to get reinstated onto Medicare after an exclusion period expires

--Head off the top "flags" that lead to exclusions

--Master documentation requirements making your files audit-proof

--And so much more...

To make matters worse, if you employ an excluded employee (even accidentally), any funds paid to them must be paid back to Medicare/Medicaid promptly, and if you don't take action quickly enough your entire practice could be at risk. Are you really ready to lose serious revenue by getting thrown out of Medicare and your other private insurers?

Don't take the chance. Invest just 60 minutes of your time and attend this step-by-step, plain-English online training session that will provide you with the tools you need to protect yourself, your staff and your practice. Don't wait, sign up today.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of healthcare compliance costs and penalties that are far more punishing that the "crimes." If you wonder why America pays the highest cost per person for uneven healthcare coverage and care, take a look at this chart of the administrative system that has mushroomed into an incredibly costly bureaucratic monster that provides zero care.

Add layer after layer after layer of new complex regulations to the practice of medicine, and soon enough you need millions of paper-pushing employees to monitor compliance, enforce compliance, pursue administrative and criminal charges of non-compliance, file claims and counter-claims, defend the innocent from false accusations, write hundreds of pages of new regulations, and so on.

Yes, there is a place for common-sense regulations, and procedures to vet caregivers and track standards of care, etc.

But the system is now so onerous and out of control that the practice of medicine now requires far more attorneys and compliance-regulatory-paper-pushers than it does doctors and nurses.

This is but one example of America's obsessive penchant for criminalizing and over-regulating everyday life. No wonder America has over 20 million people with felony convictions, many for drug-related offenses that should have been treated as medical conditions (such as addiction).

In America, every "crime" deserves a heavy and often-life-destroying penalty--even non-compliance "crimes" committed by overworked innocents.

This criminalization of everyday life is not just insanely costly and insanely counter-productive--it's insanely punitive. It is the output of a sick society, a sick culture and a sickness-unto-death system of governance.

[amorphous]

[Rurudyne]

Regulatory Decapture: roll back the beast!

[RatRipper]

bttt

[Boomer]

Our litigious society is definitely out of control. The graph should also show how many new attorneys there were during the same time frame and how many went into this kind of law.

Lawyers benefit the most from all these suits, fines, and penalties since they will be hired to appeal which could go on for years while padding their bank accounts significantly while the people who are on the ground doing the real work of healing people get the shaft.

On the other hand there are something like 500,000 serious medical mistakes made yearly. There must be a way to reduce this significantly through a process of quality control much like any assembly line which hospitals and clinics do resemble as they move people in and out shuffling them to the next area of care.

Then again there should be a way to wean the dead weight and hacks out of the profession so they don’t do more harm than they already have.

A complicated problem with no easy solutions unfortunately.

[amorphous]

A complicated problem with no easy solutions unfortunately.

True, but something better left for private enterprise to sort out - not bureaucrats, monopolies, or associations enamored with protecting their own piece of the pie while regulating the thing almost out of reach for the average person with an average income and a family.

[Retain Mike]

You can see this all started before the Obamacare bill. Related to the email the stimulus bill created the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Health Information Technology Research Centers. These bureaucracies duplicate private sector information bases that utilize computer technologies for coordination and flow of recommendations and policies for medical knowledge. The HHS Secretary will use these bureaucracies to implement Congressional intent.

Decisions will be guided by a panel exceeding 20 members allowing the dominate political regime over 90% of appointments, while requiring only one physician. Among three separate reports, one evaluation must include health technologies meeting senior and disabled individual needs. Health care provider participation becomes mandatory under Section 13112 of the HITACT Act, if one participates in any government program, including Medicare serving seniors and disabled.

[SpaceBar]

P.J. O’Rourke mentioned some years ago that there were three countries where you could be arrested for practicing medicine outside ‘the system’... North Korea, Cuba, and Canada.

[Brian Griffin]

Limit total annual financial penalties under federal law to say $100 plus your one-eighth of one’s highest annual income tax amount in the last ten in electronic IRS records.

Allow judges to double future annual limits.

We need to rid people of fear.

[Brian Griffin]

To penalize Medicare providers for such triviality is dangerous to the health of America’s seniors.

[Brian Griffin]

Perhaps a regulation specifically impacting medical practice should either have to be approved by the AMA or by Congress itself.

[Brian Griffin]

“Unlicensed New Jersey dentist Roben Brookhim agreed to pay $1.1 million and accept a 50-year exclusion from participating in Federal health care programs as part of a settlement to resolve his administrative liability for presenting false claims to Medicaid, billing for services furnished by an excluded person, and owning and controlling a Medicaid-participating entity while he was excluded, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today.”

....

“OIG alleged that from November 2005 through October 2012, Brookhim owned, controlled, and managed Associated Dental NP, LLC (ADNP), a New Jersey dental practice with multiple locations, in violation of his exclusion from Federal health care program participation in August 2000.”

“As part of his fraud scheme, Brookhim assumed the identity of a licensed New Jersey dentist (”Dentist A”), to provide services to ADNP patients. Brookhim assumed Dentist A’s identity because Brookhim had lost his dental license in 2004.”

https://www.oig.hhs.gov/newsroom/news-releases/2017/50year.asp

[Brian Griffin]

“01-06-2017
Utah Nursing Home and Owner Agree to 30 Year ExclusionOn January 6, 2017, Deseret Health Group and Jon Robertson (Robertson), Bountiful, Utah, agreed to be excluded from participation in all Federal health care programs for a period of thirty years under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1320a-7(b)(7) and 1320a-7(b)(6)(B). OIG alleged that Deseret Health Group and Robertson: (a) failed to provide adequate care planning and assessments of residents; (b) failed to provide medications, treatments, laboratory tests, physical therapy, and other services as ordered and/or prescribed by residents’ physicians; (c) failed to properly use and/or administer psychotropic drugs; (d) failed to follow appropriate pressure ulcer and infection control protocols for some residents; (e) failed to follow appropriate fall protocols for some residents; (f) failed to properly administer medications to some of the residents to avoid medication errors; (g) failed to provide a safe living environment for residents; and (h) failed to answer some residents’ call lights promptly. Senior Counsel Felicia Heimer represented OIG.”

https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/enforcement/cmp/

[Brian Griffin]

“Deseret Health Group runs facilities in Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Utah.

“Its founder, Jon Robertson, served prison time and owed $150,000 in restitution to the IRS for filing a false tax return as president of another nursing home management company.”

http://www.sltrib.com/home/2506455-155/utah-company-facing-bankruptcy-nursing-home