HIPAA has been on the books since 1996. With the advent of electronic health records, HHS adopted security regulations to require covered entities to protect the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of electronic personal health information (PHI). The Security Rule was adopted in 2003 and includes data breach notification requirements. The Office of Civil Rights at HHS is responsible for enforcing the Security Rule and other...

Chief Compliance Officers are moving up  the corporate ladder. They are being separated out of the legal function and empowered to exercise greater authority in the company. Research already has shown that this structure makes a company’s ethics and compliance program more effective. The next challenge facing CCOs is to ensure that they have a seat at the Business Table – not just a chair...

1.  Basic FCPA Compliance Training Tuesday, July 15, 2014, 12 Noon EST Sign Up Here   2.  Building a Culture of Ethics Tuesday, July 29, 2014, 12 Noon EST Sign Up Here The Volkov Law Group is offering two webinars for the rest of July 2014. The first webinar, on July 15, 2014, provides a basic FCPA training program. A number of webinar attendees have...

The Affordable Care Act included a mandate that medical service providers and suppliers enact compliance programs as a condition of participating in federal health care programs. (The ACA also set a deadline of March 23, 2013, for skilled nursing facilities and nursing facilities to implement a compliance program). The ACA requires HHS and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to establish core elements for...

BNP Paribas’ recent settlement of nearly $9 billion for violating US Sanctions against Sudan, Iran and other countries is another important achievement for the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York and the Department of Justice. For other global financial institutions, the BNP settlement has to cause some anxiety. A number of other financial institutions engaged in similar conduct with regard to...

Every company claims that they encourage a “speak up” culture. As part of a “speak up” culture, companies encourage managers and employees to raise concerns about potential violations and promise not to retaliate against anyone who raises a concern. Some companies mean what they say and some do not. The SEC recently brought its first enforcement action against a company for retaliating against a whistleblower....

You have to admire the vigilance and dedication of prosecutors and law enforcement investigators who fight Medicare fraud. There is no question that they have ramped up enforcement and promoted a strong message of deterrence. Consider the nature of the problem. The FBI estimates that between five and ten percent of all healthcare expenditures (government and private) are fraudulent. Medicare suffers huge annual losses from...

As CCOs become a key player in the corporate governance world, ethics and compliance leaders are developing principles to be used by compliance pofessionals. It is a natural process that reflects the growing “professionalization” of the compliance profession. It would be helpful for compliance officers to develop their own code of conduct, i.e. a set of general principles to help guide compliance professionals in their...

July 8, 2014, 12 Noon EST SIGN UP HERE Companies have designed and implemented anti-corruption compliance programs.  An important element of an effective compliance program is monitoring and auditing the program to identify issues for improvement. Working in collaboration with the Internal Auditor, Chief Compliance Officers have to rely on tailored monitoring and auditing procedures to identify issues for review to ensure improvement of a...