Author Archives: Finney Law Firm

• posted: Jan. 02, 2020
• Stephanie Wittmann
• Uncategorized

Hemmer DeFrank Wessels PLLC is pleased to announce Kyle M. Winslow has been elected to partnership effective January 1, 2020.

A member of the firm’s litigation practice group, Kyle concentrates his practice on representing individuals and businesses in complex business disputes, business divorce, and plaintiffs’ defamation matters.

Outside of the firm, Kyle was appointed in 2018 by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky to the Executive Branch Ethics Commission.  He recently completed a three-year term as a board member of the Northern Kentucky Bar Association.  Kyle is licensed in state and federal courts in Kentucky, and Ohio, and Indiana, and received his J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

About Finney Law Firm, LLC

Founded in 2014, FLF has grown to 15 attorneys located in offices in Eastgate and downtown Cincinnati with five major practice areas: Corporate Law, Real Estate Law, Employment Law, Commercial Litigation and Public Interest and Constitutional Litigation.  FLF has the unique claim to three 9-0 victories at the United States Supreme Court for its public interest practice along with breakthrough class action work.

FLF also has an affiliated title insurance company, Ivy Pointe Title, LLC, that closes and insures nearly a thousand commercial and residential real estate transactions annually.

For more information about Finney Law Firm, visit finneylawfirm.com.

Media Contact: Mickey McClanahan; [email protected]; 513.797.2850.

 

• posted: Feb. 15, 2021
• J. Will Huber
• Business Law
• central authority,  hague convention,  serve,  service-of-process

Correct service of process is a basic and vital part of initiating a lawsuit. In American jurisprudence, courts need to know that defendants have received actual notice of the existence of lawsuits filed against them. Service of process on a foreign person or entity can be complicated but must be completed properly or the plaintiff risks having the suit dismissed.

The United States is a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents. The purpose of the Hague Convention is to formalize serving lawsuit papers and other documents in a timely and simple manner to ensure that foreign persons or entities sued in another country receive actual notice of legal actions against them.

Under the Hague Convention, signatories designate a “central authority” to accept documents to be served on persons or entities in that country who are named as defendants. The central authority then effects service on those parties according to local law and provides proof of service to the plaintiffs.

It is important for plaintiffs and their business lawyers who are suing foreign persons or entities in the United States to be aware of the service-of-process laws in the country where the named defendants are situated. Under Alternative A of the Hague Convention, parties may directly serve documents by mail on other parties to the suit if permitted by the country where the defendant lives. If a country does not permit direct service by mail, the serving party must serve legal documents through the central authority. In some countries, the central authority requires that the legal documents to be served are in that country’s official language.

If the country in which a defendant resides is not party to the Hague Convention, Kentucky law permits service of process through registered mail.

Another way to effect service of process on a foreign entity is to serve that entity’s registered agent in the United States. If there is no registered agent, the foreign entity’s subsidiary may be served if it is an actual or apparent agent of the corporate parent and the corporate parent exercises dominion or control over the subsidiary.

About Finney Law Firm, LLC

Founded in 2014, FLF has grown to 15 attorneys located in offices in Eastgate and downtown Cincinnati with five major practice areas: Corporate Law, Real Estate Law, Employment Law, Commercial Litigation and Public Interest and Constitutional Litigation.  FLF has the unique claim to three 9-0 victories at the United States Supreme Court for its public interest practice along with breakthrough class action work.

FLF also has an affiliated title insurance company, Ivy Pointe Title, LLC, that closes and insures nearly a thousand commercial and residential real estate transactions annually.

For more information about Finney Law Firm, visit finneylawfirm.com.

Media Contact: Mickey McClanahan; [email protected]; 513.797.2850.

 

• posted: Dec. 15, 2019
• Todd McMurtry
• Business Law
• cyberattacks,  cybersecurity,  doxing,  internet security,  social media

An aggravated consumer, industry rival, former employee or another person who is upset with your company may try to exact revenge by use of “doxing” — the practice of gathering a person or entity’s personal information and publishing it online. This may include sensitive information about the finances, health, residence, political affiliation, family and private lives of executives and employees at targeted organizations. Whether performed by an experienced hacker or an amateur sleuth, doxing can take a serious toll on a company, leaving it and its employees vulnerable to embarrassment and possible financial injury.

Doxing is distinguishable from defamation, which is the publication of false information about a person or entity. The danger from doxing is that the information released is true but sensitive. Unfortunately, there is a wealth of data that can be legally obtained online by clever searchers.

Fortunately, there are ways to help prevent hackers from finding the information they want. Cyber security professionals recommend the following actions:

• Provide digital security training for employees — Create standard protocols for Internet activity and teach information-protection practices to employees. This helps prevent the release of information that should remain private.
• Limit what is shared on social media — People with bad intentions can latch onto one detail your employee posts online and use it to uncover much more about the person’s life. Changing social media privacy settings can limit access to identifying data points — like addresses, employers, schools and email addresses — making it harder to track you on other platforms.
• Use encryption tools — A hacker who accesses someone’s computer system may obtain important data and metadata from documents like Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Documents and communications should be encrypted to keep their contents virtually inaccessible to anyone except the intended recipient.
• Use strong passwords and vary them — Passwords are the keys to your data online, yet many users favor simple passwords that are easy to remember and, worse, include identifying information. Security experts recommend long passwords with a mix of numbers, symbols and upper- and lower-case letters. Also, use different ones for different accounts.
• Update computer security — Internet firewall and antivirus software should be frequently updated. New versions are issued frequently to keep ahead of hackers that learn to exploit security weaknesses and mine hard drives for data.

Doxing may warrant civil legal action or criminal charges, depending on the type of information released, the means used to acquire the information, the intent of the publisher and the reputation damage or other harm inflicted.

About Finney Law Firm, LLC

Founded in 2014, FLF has grown to 15 attorneys located in offices in Eastgate and downtown Cincinnati with five major practice areas: Corporate Law, Real Estate Law, Employment Law, Commercial Litigation and Public Interest and Constitutional Litigation.  FLF has the unique claim to three 9-0 victories at the United States Supreme Court for its public interest practice along with breakthrough class action work.

FLF also has an affiliated title insurance company, Ivy Pointe Title, LLC, that closes and insures nearly a thousand commercial and residential real estate transactions annually.

For more information about Finney Law Firm, visit finneylawfirm.com.

Media Contact: Mickey McClanahan; [email protected]; 513.797.2850.

 

• posted: Dec. 02, 2019
• Todd McMurtry
• Defamation

Dear Friend of Nicholas Sandmann:

I wanted to let you know that the Fidelis Center for Law and Policy has agreed to raise money to help Nicholas and his family cover the costs associated with bringing lawsuits against the mainstream media outlets such as the Washington Post, CNN, and NBC Universal.  These costs include hiring experts, paying the costs to discover written and electronic records, the cost to take depositions, and travel costs.  The money raised in this campaign, net of expenses, will go directly to pay only costs.  My co-counsel, Lin Wood, and I are not paid by these funds. So, the money you contributed goes directly to reducing the Sandmann family’s costs.

Thank you for your support of Nicholas Sandmann and his family.

Sincerely,

Todd McMurtry

Legal Counsel for Nicholas Sandmann

 

• posted: May 13, 2019
• Janie Ratliff
• Business Law
• medical practice,  Medical records law in Kentucky,  records storage

Written By: Janie Ratliff-Sweeney

The time has come to close a chapter and move on from your medical practice. But closing down a physician’s office doesn’t just involve business concerns like notifying personnel or selling equipment. Doctors must also worry about the fate of their patient records.

If you are a Kentucky doctor closing your practice, be sure to notify patients and offer to send copies of their records to another physician of their own choosing. The Kentucky Medical Association recommends notifying patients 60 to 90 days before you close your practice.

For patients who do not opt to have their records sent to a successor physician, records should be retained for storage with a custodian, who may be another physician or a commercial service. An experienced attorney can draft a custodial agreement, which should include such details as:

• the length of time records should be retained
• a requirement that you and your patients may continue to access records
• a requirement to notify the closing practice if the custodian’s contact information changes
• any fees associated with record maintenance
• compliance with state and federal regulations pertaining to patients’ records

How long records should be retained depends on several factors. According to American Medical Association ethics guidelines, physicians have an obligation to retain patient records “which may reasonably be of value to a patient.”

For practical reasons, records should be kept for at least as long as the limitations period for medical malpractice claims. Kentucky’s statute of repose says that a medical malpractice lawsuit must be filed within five years of the date a negligent act or omission is said to have occurred.

Doctors participating in Medicare and in Kentucky’s Medicaid program must retain records for five years from the date of a patient’s discharge.

For patients who don‘t respond to the notification that your practice is closing, a second notice should be sent toward the end of the 90 days, informing them of the storage location of their records or, in the case of records older than five years, that the records will be destroyed.

Compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is critical as well. HIPAA’s patient privacy protections apply to storage — and destruction — of records. For older records that need to be destroyed, consider contracting a records destruction service to properly destroy paper or other media (such as CDs and flash drives) to ensure patient data remains protected.

About Finney Law Firm, LLC

Founded in 2014, FLF has grown to 15 attorneys located in offices in Eastgate and downtown Cincinnati with five major practice areas: Corporate Law, Real Estate Law, Employment Law, Commercial Litigation and Public Interest and Constitutional Litigation.  FLF has the unique claim to three 9-0 victories at the United States Supreme Court for its public interest practice along with breakthrough class action work.

FLF also has an affiliated title insurance company, Ivy Pointe Title, LLC, that closes and insures nearly a thousand commercial and residential real estate transactions annually.

For more information about Finney Law Firm, visit finneylawfirm.com.

Media Contact: Mickey McClanahan; [email protected]; 513.797.2850.

 

• posted: May 06, 2019
• Janie Ratliff
• Healthcare Law
• investigation,  licenses,  patient billings,  prescriptions

Counterintuitive as it seems, it is possible to commit fraud without actual intent. If you and your staff lack careful billing and oversight processes, you could come under investigation for Medicare/Medicaid fraud.

If you bill for 30 patients on a given day but you actually only saw 20, the 10 phantom patient billings are patently fraudulent. But even a simple mistake or oversight, such as a billing clerk including a procedure code for a patient who didn’t receive that service, can be suspect. This could happen if your staff is accustomed to billing certain codes together and they assume you provided the same services to a particular patient when, in fact, you didn’t.

Another common issue is lapsed licenses. If you have a medical provider in your office — such as a doctor, nurse or technician — they should not be working during any lapse in their license, even as short as a day. Insurance companies routinely check license information during claims processing, and such a finding would tarnish billing to all your patients for that day, including those on Medicare and Medicaid. Regulators consider billed services by an unlicensed provider as services that never happened.

Similarly, if you operate a practice but are not present or readily available while certain patients are being treated, billing for those services could be deemed fraudulent because they lacked supervision.

Prescription billing is another area fraught with risk. If you billed for a prescription that the patient never received, it could be deemed fraudulent. To avoid inadvertent billing, have a system in place to flag billed prescriptions that were never picked up.

Physicians sometimes find themselves on the wrong side of the law due to financial arrangements that could be considered kickbacks or self-referrals, such as having a financial interest in another practice to which patients are referred. Even giving small gifts to patients could get you in trouble if the gifts are deemed a reward for continuing to use your services.

With the high risk of fraud investigations arising from inadvertent mistakes, it makes sense to work with a skilled lawyer to devise a compliance plan. If you have concerns about an aspect of managing your practice, contact a knowledgeable healthcare attorney at Hemmer DeFrank Wessels, PLLC.

 

• posted: Apr. 29, 2019
• Janie Ratliff
• Employment Law,  Healthcare Law
• doctors,  employee training,  EMS,  HIPAA,  hospitals,  nurses,  patient privacy

Written By: Janie Ratliff-Sweeney

Even with the best standards and practices in place, hospitals, doctors’ offices and other medical institutions are only as good at patient health data privacy as the employees who handle the data on a daily basis. Employee mistakes put medical organizations at legal risk if data is improperly disclosed.

In a recent ruling, the Kentucky Court of Appeals upheld an employer’s right to discharge an employee for a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violation. Dianna Hereford, a hospital nurse, after prepping a patient behind a curtain for a procedure, told the physician and technician performing the procedure that the patient had Hepatitis C and advised them to wear gloves. The patient later filed a complaint, saying that Hereford spoke loudly enough to be heard by other patients and medical personnel and thus improperly disclosed private health information. Hereford argued she didn’t commit a violation, but the court found that she may have and that, in any case, the hospital had the right to fire her as an at-will employee.

The case, Hereford v. Norton Healthcare Inc. dba Norton Audubon Hospital, highlights the importance of careful employee training on HIPAA compliance and of making sure employees realize that insensitivity to patients and the appearance of improper disclosure can be as problematic as actual privacy violations.

In another case, in Tennessee, an EMS medic posted on Facebook about a man who died of a heart attack in his chicken coop, where his wife and EMS workers tried to revive him. In the post, the medic wrote that treating a patient in a chicken coop “was a first” and complained about the smell of chicken droppings. Even though the medic did not reveal private health information about the victim nor mentioned him by name, the man’s wife argued that mentioning the patient was treated in a chicken coop was enough that people in the community who knew the man could easily recognize the Facebook post was about him.

The lesson that healthcare organizations and their employees can draw from these cases is the importance of teaching employees that improper verbal communication — not just information on paper or data in a computer system — may also rise to the level of a HIPAA violation.

If you have questions about your organization’s HIPAA compliance and training programs, call a knowledgeable employment law attorney at Hemmer DeFrank Wessels, PLLC at [ln::phone] or contact us online.

 

• posted: Apr. 22, 2019
• Janie Ratliff
• Healthcare Law
• doctor,  fraud,  healthcare,  Medicaid,  Medicare,  unnecessary procedures

Written By: Janie Ratliff-Sweeney

When you hear of Medicare fraud, you may think of billings for patients who never showed or for procedures that were never performed. What might not come to mind is a doctor performing unneeded invasive procedures or surgeries on patients to increase claims to Medicaid and Medicare billing. But that’s exactly what one Kentucky doctor was found to have done.

Anis Chalhoub, while a cardiologist at a London, KY hospital, allegedly performed multiple pacemaker implants over a four-year period. He was convicted of healthcare fraud and was sentenced to serve 42 months in prison and to pay more than $275,000 in restitution and $50,000 in fines. He has been prohibited from practicing cardiology for three years following his release from prison.

The brunt of the financial fallout landed on his former employer, Saint Joseph Health Systems (now KentuckyOne Health), which agreed to pay a $16.5 settlement to affected patients though it did not admit to charges that it participated in the alleged scheme.

Healthcare organizations can protect themselves from multimillion dollar settlements by paying attention to red flags and putting procedures in place to monitor procedures and claims. Working with a healthcare lawyer knowledgeable about insurance fraud can help clarify any confusion or uncertainty you may have about relevant regulations.

To prevent false claims and unnecessary procedures, your organization can implement internal control procedures such as these:

• Randomly select and review medical charts of patients who undergo tests and other procedures to confirm that the tests met the medical necessity guidelines for reimbursement.
• Set up notification alerts for doctors with a pattern of billing for services and care with no supporting documentation.
• Conduct regular audits to see how patient records and claims line up with patient questionnaires. A record that significantly contradicts a patient’s answers about symptoms or medical history may have been falsified to support billing for tests and procedures.

In addition to proactive measures to monitor for fraudulent practices, you should pay attention to internal and external complaints about providers. Conversely, a pattern of ignoring them might later be used against your company or practice as evidence of negligence.

If you have concerns about whether you are following regulations that pertain to Medicare and Medicaid billing, call a knowledgeable healthcare attorney at Hemmer DeFrank Wessels, PLLC or contact us online.

 

• posted: Dec. 20, 2018
• Hemmer DeFrank Wessels PLLC
• Healthcare Law
• mandatory reporting

Medical records typically contain personal information that care providers must keep private in accordance with federal and state law. In most cases, only patients and their care providers may access these records without written permission.

Although most of these rules come from federal laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, there are Kentucky state laws that also dictate how care providers should handle these records. The following are some of the general rules healthcare organizations in Kentucky must know and understand:

• Access: The patient and his or her medical provider always have access to medical records. However, a patient may choose to release these records to another party, such as a spouse, the Social Security Administration or a military recruiter, by signing a release form.
• Mandatory reporting: There are some diseases the state of Kentucky requires care providers to immediately report to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. However, the cabinet must keep this information confidential, and it will not be available in public records requests.
• Privileges: Counselor-patient and psychotherapist-patient privileges may apply to medical records in Kentucky, which means patients could prevent counselors or psychiatrists who know about their medical background from disclosing it or testifying about their mental or physical health.
• Protective orders: Physicians, hospitals or patients in Kentucky may ask to limit or entirely prohibit the use of medical records via protective orders, which they must obtain through a court. Conversely, patients may also waive their right to privacy of their medical records, giving certain people access to them.
• HIV/AIDS: Kentucky has specific rules regarding the testing and disclosure of HIV and AIDS. Each local public health department provides anonymous or confidential testing for HIV, along with counseling services for people who test positive for these diseases. There are limitations to the disclosure of these test results.

About Finney Law Firm, LLC

Founded in 2014, FLF has grown to 15 attorneys located in offices in Eastgate and downtown Cincinnati with five major practice areas: Corporate Law, Real Estate Law, Employment Law, Commercial Litigation and Public Interest and Constitutional Litigation.  FLF has the unique claim to three 9-0 victories at the United States Supreme Court for its public interest practice along with breakthrough class action work.

FLF also has an affiliated title insurance company, Ivy Pointe Title, LLC, that closes and insures nearly a thousand commercial and residential real estate transactions annually.

For more information about Finney Law Firm, visit finneylawfirm.com.

Media Contact: Mickey McClanahan; [email protected]; 513.797.2850.

 

• posted: Nov. 20, 2018
• Hemmer DeFrank Wessels PLLC
• Healthcare Law
• advance directives,  Kentucky Living Will Directive Act

A living will is a legal document that allows patients to provide healthcare providers with an outline of their wishes in the event they become incapacitated and unable to communicate their wishes themselves. The document often contains a provision for a person to be designated as healthcare power of attorney. This individual can speak on the patient’s behalf if he or she cannot do so.

Kentucky has specific living will laws as outlined in the Kentucky Living Will Directive Act. These are some of the highlights of this important law.

Legal requirements for a living will to be valid

In Kentucky, a valid living will must have four components:

• The creator of the will (the testator) is an adult with testamentary capacity.
• The living will is created in writing and is appropriately signed and dated.
• The signing of the will must be witnessed by two or more unrelated adults in the presence of each other and the will creator (or acknowledged by a notary).
• The document is in essentially the same form as outlined in Kentucky Revised Statutes Section 311.625.

Revoking a living will

Living wills are revocable in the same way that traditional wills are. Methods of revocation include:

• A written declaration of revocation, signed and dated by the testator
• An oral statement of an intent to revoke in the presence of at least two adults, one being a healthcare provider
• Destruction of the existing living will with the intent to revoke it

Revocation is effective immediately. This action overrides any previous written healthcare directives.

It’s worth noting that healthcare providers may follow living wills or advance directives created outside of Kentucky, so long as those directives are consistent with generally accepted medical practices. If a doctor cannot follow the instructions of the living will, he or she must inform the patient and the family, and cannot impede transferring the patient to a healthcare facility or doctor who can comply with the instructions.

About Finney Law Firm, LLC

Founded in 2014, FLF has grown to 15 attorneys located in offices in Eastgate and downtown Cincinnati with five major practice areas: Corporate Law, Real Estate Law, Employment Law, Commercial Litigation and Public Interest and Constitutional Litigation.  FLF has the unique claim to three 9-0 victories at the United States Supreme Court for its public interest practice along with breakthrough class action work.

FLF also has an affiliated title insurance company, Ivy Pointe Title, LLC, that closes and insures nearly a thousand commercial and residential real estate transactions annually.

For more information about Finney Law Firm, visit finneylawfirm.com.

Media Contact: Mickey McClanahan; [email protected]; 513.797.2850.