Recent Lawsuit Titles and Settlements in Healthcare

As of recently, there have been many significant healthcare lawsuits throughout the country. Some of which include: lawsuit against the OSHA inspection in a Texas hospital, a hospital director of the West Virginia University affiliate of violating patient safety, and hospitals suing the United States Department of Health and Human Services over a medicare billing calculation.

To begin, the lawsuit against the OSHA inspection of a Texas hospital occurred because a tenant in Dallas Healthcare wanted to prevent the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration from inspecting the Hospitals of a location in El Paso, Texas. This was in efforts to determine if workers were vaccinated from COVID-19 and to comply with CMS’ vaccination requirements. This lawsuit was filed on April 26, 2021 and on December 27, 2021, it was reported that non-record keeping parts for healthcare workers would not be enforced anymore. OSHA has also begun to bring into effect ETS as a common standard, but they have not finished the process completely yet. 

Another healthcare issue that has been brought up is at WVU.  A medicine affiliate of the university is claiming that the institution is not following the patient safety and age discrimination laws. The individual making the claims states that he was fired after bringing to light the quality of care with patients of COVID-19, along with other diseases/illnesses. During his time at WVU, the individual raised concerns for patient safety often, and he believes that this was part of the reason that he was terminated from his position. Currently, WVU medicine has no comments on this lawsuit, and it will await further investigation.

Lastly, a clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, along with many more hospitals, is suing the HHS because of wrongful calculations of payments in Medicare Part A bills and payment adjustments. The main factor under which this is calculated is the days that one is entitled to benefits under part A. The hospitals involved claim that there are different definitions used for those who are entitled to certain benefits, and that this depends on which side of the fraction that is under review in regards to which part of the benefits that they fall under. The action being taken by hospitals that seek justice is to invalidate HHS policy, and to have the department recalculate payments and make prompt payments to the hospitals that were affected.