Company: AMWL
Filing Date: 2025-02-12
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-019024
Chunk: 74

Company: American Well Corp
Filing Date: 2025-02-12
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 74
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 abuse laws could result in fines and penalties and restrictions on our ability to operate in these jurisdictions. 

Other Healthcare Laws 

HIPAA established several separate criminal penalties for making false or fraudulent claims to insurance companies and other non-governmental payers of healthcare services. Under HIPAA, these two additional federal crimes are: “Healthcare Fraud” and “False Statements Relating to Healthcare Matters”. The Healthcare Fraud statute prohibits knowingly and recklessly executing a scheme or artifice to defraud any healthcare benefit program, including private payers. A violation of this statute is a felony and may result in fines, imprisonment, or exclusion from government sponsored programs. The False Statements Relating to Healthcare Matters statute prohibits knowingly and willfully falsifying, concealing, or covering up a material fact by any trick, scheme or device or making any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement in connection with the delivery of or payment for healthcare benefits, items, or services. A violation of this statute is a felony and may result in fines or imprisonment. This statute could be used by the government to assert criminal liability if a healthcare provider knowingly fails to refund an overpayment. These provisions are intended to punish some of the same conduct in the submission of claims to private payers as the federal False Claims Act covers in connection with governmental health programs. 

In addition, the Civil Monetary Penalties Law imposes civil administrative sanctions for, among other violations, inappropriate billing of services to federally funded healthcare programs and employing or contracting with individuals or entities who are excluded from participation in federally funded healthcare programs. Moreover, a person who offers or transfers to a Medicare or Medicaid beneficiary any remuneration, including waivers of copayments and deductible amounts (or any part thereof), that the person knows or should know is likely to influence the beneficiary’s selection of a particular 

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provider, practitioner or supplier of Medicare or Medicaid payable items or services may be liable for civil monetary penalties. Moreover, in certain cases, providers who routinely waive copayments and deductibles for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries can also be held liable under the Anti-Kickback Statute and civil False Claims Act, which can impose additional penalties associated with the wrongful act. One of the statutory exceptions to the prohibition is non-routine, unadvertised waivers of copayments or deductible amounts based on individualized determinations of financial need or exhaustion of reasonable collection efforts. The OIG emphasizes, however, that this exception should only be used occasionally to address special financial needs of a particular patient. Although this prohibition applies only to federal healthcare