Autumn B. Matthews Law Blog

The recent... Read More

The Florida Supreme Court has cleared up a murky area for defense attorneys concerning the limits of the fellow officer rule in motions to suppress.  The Court held the fellow officer rule does not allow an officer who does not have firsthand knowledge of the traffic stop and was not involved in the investigation at that time to testify as to hearsay regarding what the initial officer who conducted the stop told him or her for the purpose of proving a violation of the traffic law so as to e... Read More

The implementation of ICD-10, a medical coding system which was supposed to go into effect in October 2013, has been indefinitely postponed.... Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a ruling today in U.S. v. Jones, the GPS tracking case.  The Court held that the government's installation of a GPS device on a vehicle, and the use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a search.... Read More

This post summarizes three new health law bills recently filed in the Florida legislature.  The three bills are HB 0863, HB 0895 and HB 0901. ... Read More

In the field of healthcare compliance, it is important to keep up with the most recent OIG Advisory Opinions, as they can give some good insight as to how the government will analyze important statutes such as Stark and anti-kickback in a given context.  The purpose of this blog is to describe the most recent OIG Advisory Opinion, which deals with the legalities of an online service that would facilitate the exchange of information between health care practitioners, providers, and... Read More

Those working in hospice settings will want to take notice of the 2012 OIG Work Plan.  This blog discusses 5 ways the Work Plan affects hospice care in the upcoming year.... Read More

Recently, a... Read More

Included in the September 2011 edition of HealthLeaders magazine is some information on hospital costs for mental health and substance abuse (MHSA)  issues.  Here are some interesting statistics:

"Over the past decade, the average length of stay for MHSA diagnosis has dropped about 10%, but the number of discharges with a principal MHSA diagnosis has increased about 14%."

Average Cost of a Hospital... Read More

Nursing homes... Read More