Often, board of education members believe what happens in executive session, stays in executive session. However, you and your board’s members, both new and old, are well-served to remember that many issues, including those involving personnel, discussed in executive session are communications that may be subject to discovery in a deposition or other legal proceeding by an affected employee ...
Increased federal oversight may be on the horizon for skilled nursing facility involuntary transfers and discharges. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) included in its 2019 Work Plan reviewing SNFs’ involuntary transfers and discharges, focusing on reviewing whether State agencies have effectively investigated and enforced proper transfer and discharge procedures ...
Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing homes are frequently required to pay fines (called “civil money penalties” or “CMPs”) to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) when government surveyors find them out of compliance with the Requirements for Participation for Long-Term Care Facilities. It is not uncommon for CMS to assess CMPs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars ...
Executives and in-house counsel should be aware that traveling with sensitive data can lead to its seizure—with potentially severe consequences worldwide. Recently, Parliament in the United Kingdom seized from a traveling executive a USB drive containing data that had been produced in a United States lawsuit between Six4Three, a software company, and Facebook. Put simply, that data was in the wrong place at the wrong time ...
Under the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), large employers (generally those with 50 or more full-time employees or full-time equivalents) must report annually to the IRS information about the health coverage offered to their full-time employees during the prior year using IRS Form 1095-C. The IRS uses the forms to assess whether an employer "shared responsibility" penalty applies. Employers also must provide copies of the forms to their full-time employees ...
Over the last several years, the emphasis on privacy and data protection has grown significantly. With the amount of data collected by companies and technology skyrocketing, the need to protect personal information has been at the forefront of states’ legislative agendas. While all 50 states now have breach notification statutes, states are now taking a closer look at issues such as tracking online behavior and the use of biometric data ...
As an eventful 2018 comes to a close, we look ahead to 2019 and our “Top 10 List” of key issues U.S. financial institutions, non-banks providing financial services, and financial technology (fintech) entities should plan for and watch throughout the upcoming year. The first five items on the list are discussed below, and the remainder of our list will follow shortly in another post ...
On December 4, 2018, the Michigan Legislature pared back the minimum wage and paid sick leave laws it passed last September in an effort to preclude those issues from being on the November ballot. Had the Legislature not adopted the language of the ballot initiatives legislation, the measures would have been on the November ballot and it would have needed a vote of three-fourths of each house to amend the law if adopted by the voters ...
On December 7, 2018, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a Proposed Rule that clarifies procedures and criteria for the de novo medical device clearance pathway. In a statement accompanying the Proposed Rule, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stated FDA believes the Proposed Rule will help facilitate classification of innovative low- to moderate-risk novel medical devices by providing more structure, clarity, and transparency to the de novo pathway ...
On December 11, 2018, Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene A. Depasquale released a long-awaited report discussing the role of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in Pennsylvania’s health care system ...
I. Introduction According to a Bitkom study from September 2018, German industry has incurred a total loss of 43 billion euros as a result of cyberattacks over the past two years. Seven out of ten industrial companies have been victims of such attacks during this period. At EU level, there has recently been a growing discussion on how to face this mounting danger ...
Several years ago the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) required skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) to report nurse staffing levels using the SNF’s payroll records, in an effort to obtain more accurate information about actual daily nurse presence in SNFs. CMS has collected this Payroll Based Journal (PBJ) information for a few quarters now ...
The ePrivacy Regulation was actually supposed to enter into force on May 25, 2018 jointly with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Now it is expected to go into effect in 2019 at the earliest. It has new provisions in store, particularly for online marketing. The ePrivacy Regulation is intended to replace the current European ePrivacy Directive (2002/58/EC) and the Cookie Directive (2009/136/EC) ...
The online retail sector has seen a considerable increase in intervention by the competition authorities both on a national level and in Brussels. Most recently, in December 2018, the European Commission fined the clothing company Guess € 39.8 million for applying online sales and advertising restrictions ...
Beginning January 1, 2019, employers in Illinois will have new requirements for reimbursing employee expenses. An amendment to the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act (IWPCA) is the first Illinois law regulating employer reimbursement for employees’ business-related expenditures. Previously, the IWPCA did not address employee reimbursement, so employers were free to implement their own rules and procedures for reimbursing employees for business expenses ...
Most companies go to great lengths to protect and maintain their intellectual property (IP). These companies recognize the value of their IP and work towards its development, sustainability and commercialization. IP strategy customary includes where and when to file patent applications, how to choose a brand name and register it, how to protect and enforce copyrights, protect trade secrets, etc ...
PSD2 came into effect in the European Union on January 13, 2018. PSD2 is important as it aims to further harmonise the EU payments market and break the banks' de facto monopoly on the provision of payment services and the use of their customer data. Below is a review of developments to date as they relate to transposing PSD2 into Norwegian law, including an update on the most recent developments ...
On December 23, 2018, new State Medical Board of Ohio regulations became effective which marked another change in the legal standards governing provider use of opiates for treatment of pain ...
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has once again stepped up its oversight of Accrediting Organizations (AOs).[1] On December 18, 2018, CMS issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking to determine whether AOs have a conflict of interest between their governmental contract and their private business. See “Medicare Program: Accrediting Organizations Conflict of Interest and Consulting Services; Request for Information,” 83 FR 65331 ...
Software is becoming the main part of an increasingly amount of products set on the market; a trend which will become more and more evident in the years to come. This fact challenges the legal landscape and interpretation of product liability laws, and contract makers must pay attention to potential new risks imposed on the parties. If a product causes damages to a third party, complex questions may arise with respect to liability and the chain of causation ...
To protect and stimulate creators to increase innovation and encourage entrepreneurship, Norwegian authorities are changing the law. In 2018 we received several proposals towards strengthening the rights of those who create new ideas or build their business on intellectual property. Looking back at 2018, we see a year in which the Norwegian intellectual property (IP) legislation has been in movement. Technology is developing fast, and so must the law protecting technology ...
Under its Article 88(1), the GDPR allows Member States to draw up their own rules for the area of employee data protection. Germany has taken advantage of this option with Section 26 of the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG). The first sentence of Section 26(1) already applies while the decision to establish an employment relationship is made and hence it needs to be taken into account early in the application process ...
On December 19th, 2018, the Ministry of Labor published Ordinance No. 1,085/2018, for the purpose of amending Regulation No. 22 ("NR-22"), which regulates aspects related to the mining sector occupational safety and health. The reformed NR-22 therefore brings changes to the sections regarding the Disposal of Tailings, Wastes and Products and the Emergency Response Plan, within the framework of the National Policy on Dams Safety ("PNSB") ...
