Source: https://slphrbenefitsupdate.com/category/internal-investigations/
Timestamp: 2017-07-23 18:43:11
Document Index: 559442286

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 160', 'art 164', '§ 164', '§ 164', '§ 1320', '§164']

Internal Investigations | HomeAbout The Authors
Comment By 7/13 On OSHA Proposed Electronic Reporting Rule Delay To 12/1/17 July 7, 2017
July 13 is the deadline to comment on a Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed rule that would delay four months the compliance date of its electronic reporting rule, formally called “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses.” The compliance date would be extended from July 1, 2017, to Dec. 1, 2017 to allow OSHA to further review and consider its final rule the Obama Administration previously published on May 12, 2016. The rule requires certain employers to submit their employee injury and illness logs to OSHA electronically.
Employers and others that support the rule should act promptly to express their support in the form of a comment by the July 13 deadline.
Ms. Stamer works with businesses and their management, employee benefit plans, governments and other organizations deal with all aspects of human resources and workforce, safety and occupational injury, internal controls and regulatory compliance, change management and other performance and operations management and compliance. Her day-to-day work encompasses both labor and employment issues, as well as independent contractor, outsourcing, employee leasing, management services and other nontraditional service relationships. She supports her clients both on a real-time, “on demand” basis and with longer term basis to deal with all aspects for workforce and human resources management, including, recruitment, hiring, firing, compensation and benefits, occupational health and safety, promotion, discipline, compliance, trade secret and confidentiality, noncompetition, privacy and data security, daily performance and operations management, emerging crises, strategic planning, process improvement and change management, investigations, defending litigation, audits, investigations or other enforcement challenges, government affairs and public policy.
Well-known for her extensive work with health, insurance, financial services, technology, energy, manufacturing, retail, hospitality and governmental employers, her nearly 30 years’ of experience encompasses domestic and international businesses of all types and sizes.
A Fellow in the American College of Employee Benefit Counsel, the American Bar Foundation and the Texas Bar Foundation, Ms. Stamer also shares her thought leadership, experience and advocacy on these and other concerns by her service in the leadership of a broad range of other professional and civic organization including her involvement as the Vice Chair of the North Texas Healthcare Compliance Association; Executive Director of the Coalition on Responsible Health Policy and its PROJECT COPE: Coalition on Patient Empowerment; former Board President of the early childhood development intervention agency, The Richardson Development Center for Children; former Gulf Coast TEGE Council Exempt Organization Coordinator; a founding Board Member and past President of the Alliance for Healthcare Excellence; former board member and Vice President of the Managed Care Association; past Board Member and Board Compliance Committee Chair for the National Kidney Foundation of North Texas; a member and advisor to the National Physicians’ Council for Healthcare Policy; current Vice Chair of the ABA Tort & Insurance Practice Section Employee Benefits Committee; current Vice Chair of Policy for the Life Sciences Committee of the ABA International Section; Past Chair of the ABA Health Law Section Managed Care & Insurance Section; a current Defined Contribution Plan Committee Co-Chair, former Group Chair and Co-Chair of the ABA RPTE Section Employee Benefits Group; immediate past RPTE Representative to ABA Joint Committee on Employee Benefits Council Representative and current RPTE Representative to the ABA Health Law Coordinating Council; past Chair of the Dallas Bar Association Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Committee; a former member of the Board of Directors, Treasurer, Member and Continuing Education Chair of the Southwest Benefits Association and others.
Ms. Stamer also is a highly popular lecturer, symposia chair and author, who publishes and speaks extensively on human resources, labor and employment, employee benefits, compensation, occupational safety and health, and other regulatory and operational risk management. Examples of her many highly regarded publications on these matters include the “Texas Payday Law” Chapter of Texas Employment Law, as well as thousands of other publications, programs and workshops these and other concerns for the American Bar Association, ALI-ABA, American Health Lawyers, Society of Human Resources Professionals, the Southwest Benefits Association, the Society of Employee Benefits Administrators, the American Law Institute, Lexis-Nexis, Atlantic Information Services, The Bureau of National Affairs (BNA), InsuranceThoughtLeaders.com, Benefits Magazine, Employee Benefit News, Texas CEO Magazine, HealthLeaders, the HCCA, ISSA, HIMSS, Modern Healthcare, Managed Healthcare, Institute of Internal Auditors, Society of CPAs, Business Insurance, Employee Benefits News, World At Work, Benefits Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Business Journal, the Houston Business Journal, and many other symposia and publications. She also has served as an Editorial Advisory Board Member for human resources, employee benefit and other management focused publications of BNA, HR.com, Employee Benefit News, InsuranceThoughtLeadership.com and many other prominent publications and speaks and conducts training for a broad range of professional organizations and for clients on the Advisory Boards of InsuranceThoughtLeadership.com, HR.com, Employee Benefit News, and many other publications.
Solutions Law Press, Inc.™ provides human resources and employee benefit and other business risk management, legal compliance, management effectiveness and other coaching, tools and other resources, training and education on leadership, governance, human resources, employee benefits, data security and privacy, insurance, health care and other key compliance, risk management, internal controls and operational concerns. If you find this of interest, you also be interested reviewing some of our other Solutions Law Press, Inc.™ resources at SolutionsLawPress.com
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Posted by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer	Stamer To Moderate, Talk Medical CyberSecurity At 5/19 ISSA-LA IT Security Meedical Privacy Forum
Solutions Law Press, Inc. editor and attorney Cynthia Marcotte Stamer will speak and moderate two key panel programs on health care privacy and data security scheduled at the Healthcare Privacy & Security Form hosted on May 19, 2017 by the Information Security Systems Association of Los Angeles County (ISSA-LA) as a component of its 9th Annual ISSA-LA Information Security Summit. The presentations of Ms. Stamer and others at the conference are particularly timely coming on the heels of the May 12 Cyber alerts to U.S. health industry and other businesses about the urgent need to defend against the spread of an epidemic international malware threat targeting U.S. healthcare and other businesses. See Urgent WannaCry Ransomware Cyber Warning Issued; Alert: Guard Health E-Mail, Other IT Against WannaCry Malware Attack.
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Posted by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer	$2.4M HIPAA Settlement Message Warns Health Plans & Providers Against Sharing Medical Info With Media, Others
Conduct Entity-Wide Risk Assessment & Review & Tighten Media Relations Policies, Processes & Training ASAP
Taking these and other needed steps to evaluate, and strengthen and enforce as needed, risk assessments, policies, procedures, and training to prevent wrongful use, access or disclosure of PHI to the media or others is particularly critical in light of the ongoing tightening of expectations, and rising enforcement and sanctions for HIPAA violations since Congress amended HIPAA in 2009. See OCR Audit Program Kickoff Further Heats HIPAA Privacy Risks; HIPAA Heats Up: HITECH Act Changes Take Effect & OCR Begins Posting Names, Other Details Of Unsecured PHI Breach Reports On Website. Based on experiences reported in the MHHS and other similar resolution agreements, Covered Entities also generally will want to ensure that their policies, procedures and training extend to all potential sources of communications that could involve patient information and make clear that the Privacy Rule restrictions must be followed even if the circumstances involve allegations of misconduct, special performance by healthcare providers or others that it would benefit the organization or certain individuals to have known to the public, or other circumstances likely to be of interest to the media or other parties.
In conducting this analysis and risk assessment, it will be important that Covered Entities include, but also look beyond the four corners of their Privacy Policies to ensure that their review and risk assessment identifies and assesses and addresses compliance risks on an entity wide basis. This entity-wide assessment should include both communications and requests for information normally addressed to the Privacy Officer as well as requests and communications that could arise in the course of media or other public relations, practice transition, workforce communication and other operations not typically under the direct oversight and management of the Privacy Officer. For this reason, Covered Entities also generally will not only to adopt and implement specific policies, processes and training in these other departments to prohibit and prevent inappropriate disclosures of PHI in the course of those departments operations. It also may be advisable to pre-established processes for reviewing media or other communications for potential PHI content and require prior review of any proposed public relations and other internal or external communications containing patient PHI or other information by the privacy officer, legal counsel or another suitably qualified party.
Author of leading works on HIPAA and other privacy and data security works and the scribe leading the American Bar Association Joint Committee on Employee Benefits Annual Agency Meeting with OCR, her experience includes extensive compliance, risk management and data breach and other crisis event investigation, response and remediation under HIPAA and other data security, privacy and breach laws. Heavily involved in health care and health information technology, data and related process and systems development, policy and operations innovation and a Scribe for ABA JCEB annual agency meeting with OCR for many years who has authored numerous highly regarded works and training programs on trade secret, HIPAA and other medical, consumer, insurance, tax, and other privacy and data security, Ms. Stamer also is widely recognized for her extensive work and leadership on leading edge health care and benefit policy and operational issues including meaningful use and EMR, billing and reimbursement, quality measurement and reimbursement, HIPAA, FACTA, PCI, trade secret, physician and other medical confidentiality and privacy, federal and state data security and data breach and other information privacy and data security rules and many other concerns.
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Posted by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer	Latest $2.5M HIPAA Settlement Warning To Health Plans, Providers: Get HIPAA Compliant
A new Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR) CardioNet Resolution Agreement and Corrective Action Plan (Resolution Agreement) settling OCR charges of violations of the Privacy and Security Rules of the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act against remote cardiac monitoring provider CardioNet provides important lessons for all health plans, health insurers, telemedicine and other healthcare providers, healthcare clearinghouses (Covered Entities) and their business associates about steps to take to reduce their risk of getting hit with big OCR penalty like the $2.5 million settlement payment CardioNet must pay under the Resolution Agreement.
OCR announced the first OCR HIPAA settlement involving a wireless health services provider Monday, April 24. Under the Resolution Agreement, CardioNet agrees to pay OCR $2.5 million and to implement a corrective action plan to settle potential OCR charges it violated the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules based on the impermissible disclosure of unsecured electronic protected health information (ePHI).
The latest in a rapidly-growing list of high dollar HIPAA enforcement actions by OCR, the CardioNet Resolution Agreement contains numerous lessons for other Covered entities and their business associates about the importance of appropriate HIPAA privacy and security compliance, including but not limited to the following:
Finally, the $2.5 million settlement payment required by the Resolution Agreement and its implementation against CardioNet makes clear that OCR remains serious about HIPAA enforcement.
Clearly, covered entities, business associates and their management should take steps to promptly review the adequacy of their organizations’ HIPAA compliance policies, practices and documentation in light of the deficiencies listed in the CardioNet and other HIPAA OCR settlements and civil monetary penalty assessments. See e.g., Latest HIPAA Resolution Agreement Drives Home Importance Of Maintaining Current, Signed Business Associate Agreements; $400K HIPAA Penalty Teaches Risk Assessment Importance; $3.2 Children’s HIPAA CMP Teaches Key Lessons.
Of course, covered entities and business associates need to keep in mind that acts, omissions and events that create HIPAA liability risks also carry many other potential legal and business risks. For instance, since PHI records and data involved in such breaches usually incorporates Social Security Numbers, credit card or other debt or payment records or other personal consumer information, and other legally sensitive data, covered entities and business associates generally also may face investigation, notification and other responsibilities and liabilities under confidentiality, privacy or data security rules of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA), the Internal Revenue Code, the Social Security Act, state identity theft, data security, medical confidentiality, privacy and ethics, insurance, consumer privacy, common law or other state privacy claims and a host of other federal or state laws. Depending on the nature of the covered entity or its business associates, the breach or other privacy event also may trigger fiduciary liability exposures for health plan fiduciaries in the case of a health plan, professional ethics or licensing investigations or actions against health care providers, insurance companies, administrative service providers or brokers, shareholder or other investor actions, employment or vendor termination or disputes and a host of other indirect legal consequences.
Beyond, and regardless of if, a covered entity or business ultimately succeeds in defending its actions against a charge of violating any of these or other standards, however, covered entities, business associates and their leaders should keep in mind that the most material and often most intractable consequences of a HIPAA or other data or other privacy breach report or public accusation, investigation, admission also typically are the most inevitable:
As the conduct of these activities generally will involve the collection and analysis of legally sensitive matters, most covered entities and business associates will want to involve legal counsel experienced with these matters and utilize appropriate procedures to be able to use and assert attorney-client privilege and other evidentiary privileges to mitigate risks associated with these processes. To help plan for and mitigate foreseeable expenses of investigating, responding to or mitigating a known, suspected or asserted breech or other privacy event, most covered entities and business associates also will want to consider the advisability of tightening privacy and data security standards, notification, cooperation and indemnification protections in contracts between covered entities and business associates, acquiring or expanding data breach or other liability coverage, or other options for mitigating the financial costs of responding to a breach notification, investigation or enforcement action.
Author of leading works on HIPAA and other privacy and data security works and the scribe leading the American Bar Association Joint Committee on Employee Benefits Annual Agency Meeting with OCR, her experience includes extensive compliance, risk management and data breach and other crisis event investigation, response and remediation under HIPAA and other data security, privacy and breach laws. Heavily involved in health care and health information technology, data and related process and systems development, policy and operations innovation and a Scribe for ABA JCEB annual agency meeting with OCR for many years who has authored numerous highly regarded works and training programs on HIPAA and other data security, privacy and use, Ms. Stamer also is widely recognized for her extensive work and leadership on leading edge health care and benefit policy and operational issues including meaningful use and EMR, billing and reimbursement, quality measurement and reimbursement, HIPAA, FACTA, PCI, trade secret, physician and other medical confidentiality and privacy, federal and state data security and data breach and other information privacy and data security rules and many other concerns.
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Posted by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer	Latest HIPAA Resolution Agreement Drives Home Importance Of Maintaining Current, Signed Business Associate Agreements
Health plans, their fiduciaries and sponsors, health insurers, health care providers, health care clearinghouses (“covered entities”) and their business associates must get and keep your business associate (BA) agreements (BAAs) in place, up-to-date, and readily available for inspection in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule, 45 C.F.R. Part 160 and Subparts A and E of Part 164 (Privacy Rule). That’s the clear message to covered entities and their business associates in the April 17, 2017 HIPAA Resolution Agreement just announced by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) with the Center for Children’s Digestive Health (CCDH).
While the Resolution Agreement relates to breaches of the BAA requirements of a small pediatric practice, all health plans, health care providers and other covered entities and business associates should focus on the adequacy of their BAAs and their BAA record keeping. HIPAA compliance surveys reflect deficiencies with the BAA rules are common throughout the industry. These findings and the involvement of BAs in data breaches or other OCR enforcement activities suggest a high probability that many other covered entities and business associates may be sitting ducks for similar sanctions. See e.g., HIPAA Compliance Survey Churns Up Many Business Associate Problems (January 3, 2017). Consequently, all covered entities and business associates generally should treat the CCDH Resolution Agreement as a message to review and correct as necessary their organizations’ compliance and recordkeeping to minimize their exposure to potential sanctions from violations of the HIPAA business associate rules.
The HIPAA Business Associate Agreement Requirements
OCR’s announcement of the CCDH Resolution Agreement is the latest in a growing series of HIPAA enforcement actions showing the growing risk covered entities and their business associates face for failing to take appropriate steps to comply with the BAA and other Privacy Rule requirements of HIPAA.
As compliance audits and surveys of covered entities and business associates suggest a high level of noncompliance with the business associate agreement requirements among covered entities and business associates, While the ever-growing list of Resolution Agreements and Civil Monetary Penalties announced by OCR cover a variety of categories of HIPAA violations, the CCDH Resolution Agreement highlights the importance of covered entities and their business associates ensuring that before the BA creates, accesses, receives, discloses, retains or destroys any PHI for the covered entity, a BAA meeting the Privacy Rule requirements is signed and retained for at least the six-year period the Privacy Rule requires in a manner easily producible when and if OCR or another agency asks for a copy as part of an investigation or other compliance audit. See Privacy Rule §§ 164.502(e), 164.504(e), 164.532(d) and (e).
The Privacy Rule requires that covered entities and business associates enter into a written and signed business associate agreement that contains the elements specified in Privacy Rule § 164.504(e) before the business associate creates, uses, accesses or discloses PHI of the covered entity. Meanwhile, the Privacy Rule recordkeeping requirements require that covered entities and BAs maintain copies of these BAAs for a minimum of six years.
Violations of the Privacy Rule can carry stiff civil or even criminal penalties Pursuant to amendments to HIPAA enacted as part of the HITECH Act, civil penalties typically do not apply to violations punished under the criminal penalty rules of HIPAA set forth in Social Security Act , 42 U.S.C § 1320d-6 (Section 1177).
Under Section 1177, the criminal enforcement provisions of HIPAA authorize the Justice Department to prosecute a person who knowingly in violation of the Privacy Rule (1) uses or causes to be used a unique health identifier; (2) obtains individually identifiable health information relating to an individual; or (3) discloses individually identifiable health information to another person, punishable by the following criminal sanctions and penalties:
In contrast, as amended by the HITECH Act, the civil enforcement provisions of HIPAA empower OCR to impose Civil Monetary Penalties on both covered entities and BAs for violations of any of the requirements of the Privacy or Security Rules. The penalty ranges for civil violations depends upon the circumstances associated with the violations and are subject to upward adjustment for inflation. As most recently adjusted here effective September 6, 2016, the following currently are the progressively increasing Civil Monetary Penalty tiers:
While criminal enforcement of HIPAA remains relatively rare, a review of the OCR enforcement record in recent years makes clear that civil enforcement of HIPAA and the sanctions imposed is growing. See e.g., $400K HIPAA Settlement Shows Need To Conduct Timely & Appropriate Risk Assessments; $5.5M Memorial HIPAA Resolution Agreement Shows Need To Audit. For more examples, also see here.
CCDH Sanctions For Violation Of HIPAA Business Associate Agreement Rules
The CCDH Resolution Agreement arises from violations of this requirement that OCR says it discovered as a result of a compliance review conducted in response to an OCR investigation of a CCDH business associate, FileFax, Inc. According to OCR, OCR found from the compliance review of CCDH triggered by OCR’s investigation of FileFax that while CCDH began disclosing PHI to Filefax in 2003 and that Filefax stored records containing protected health information (PHI) for CCDH, neither CCDH nor Filefax could produce a signed Business Associate Agreement (BAA) covering their relationship for any period before October 12, 2015.
Based on the resulting investigation, OCR concluded:
CCDH failed to obtain a BAA providing written assurances from Filefax that it would appropriately safeguard the PHI in Filefax’s possession or control satisfactory assurances as required by Privacy Rule §164.502(e); and
Because CCDH failed to secure the required BAA, it violated the Privacy Rule by impermissibly disclosing the PHI of at least 10,728 individuals to Filefax when CCDH transferred the PHI to Filefax without obtaining the requisite BAA from Filefax (Covered Conduct).
In the Resolution Agreement, CCDH agrees to pay HHS $31,000.00 (Resolution Amount) and enter into and comply with a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) in return for OCR’s release of CCDH from liability for “any actions it may have against CCDH under the HIPAA Rules” for the Covered Conduct. The Resolution Agreement only settles the civil monetary penalty and other OCR enforcement liabilities of CCDH with respect to the Covered Conduct. Its provisions expressly state the Resolution Agreement does not affect any exposures of CCDH to CCDH to OCR civil monetary penalties or other enforcement for any HIPAA violations other than the Covered Conduct.
Perhaps even more noteworthy given the HITECH Act’s provisions coordinating the civil and criminal sanctions of HIPAA, while the Resolution Agreement provides no clear indication that the Justice Department might be considering criminally prosecuting CCDH or any other party in relation to the Covered Conduct, the Resolution Agreement also expressly states that its provisions do not affect CCDH’s potential exposure, if any, to criminal prosecution by the Justice Department for a criminal violation of the Privacy Rules under Section 1177 of the Social Security Act.
Covered entities and their business associates should heed the CCDH Resolution Agreement as a strong message from OCR to ensure their organizations are complying with HIPAA’s BAA and other requirements. The Resolution Agreement makes clear that the starting point of this compliance effort must be obtaining and maintaining the requisite BAAs for each BA relationship.
To position their organizations to withstand potential investigation by OCR, covered entities and BAs should start by conducting a well-documented audit within the scope of attorney-client privilege both to verify that an appropriate, signed BAA is in place for each BA relationship as well as adequacy of processes for identifying business associate relationships, ensuring that signed BAAs are in effect before BAs access any PHI, and for investigating, reporting and resolving any breaches of the HIPAA Privacy or Security Rules that may arise in the course of operations.
Conducting this audit as soon as possible is particularly important in light of reported findings of widespread compliance concerns. See HIPAA Compliance Survey Churns Up Many Business Associate Problems (January 3, 2017). As the audit process could identify potential violations or other legally sensitive concerns, covered entities and business associates generally will want to arrange for this audit and evaluation to be conducted under the supervision of legal counsel experienced with HIPAA within or pursuant to processes structured with the assistance of legal counsel within the scope of attorney-client privilege.
Beyond confirming all necessary BAAs are in place, covered entities and business associates also generally will want to evaluate the adequacy of BAs’ processes and procedures for maintaining compliance with the Privacy and Security Rules as well as processes and procedures for responding to audits, investigations and complaints, reporting and addressing breaches of electronic and other PHI and other possible compliance concerns under HIPAA and other related laws. In many instances, parties may n wish to revise and strengthen existing BAAs to more specifically define these policies and procedures more specifically as well as indemnification, cyber or other liability coverage requirements and other contractual provisions for allocating potential costs and liabilities arising from breaches, audits, investigations and other expenses associated with the administration of these provisions.
Past Chair of the ABA Managed Care & Insurance Interest Group and, a Fellow in the American College of Employee Benefit Counsel, the American Bar Foundation and the Texas Bar Foundation, Ms. Stamer also has extensive health care reimbursement and insurance experience advising and defending health care providers, payers, and others about Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare and Medicaid Advantage, Tri-Care, self-insured group, association, individual and group and other health benefit programs and coverages including but not limited to advising public and private payers about coverage and program design and documentation, advising and defending providers, payers and systems and billing services entities about systems and process design, audits, and other processes; provider credentialing, and contracting; providers and payer billing, reimbursement, claims audits, denials and appeals, coverage coordination, reporting, direct contracting, False Claims Act, Medicare & Medicaid, ERISA, state Prompt Pay, out-of-network and other nonpar, insured, and other health care claims, prepayment, post-payment and other coverage, claims denials, appeals, billing and fraud investigations and actions and other reimbursement and payment related investigation, enforcement, litigation and actions.
In connection with this work, Ms. Stamer has worked extensively with health care providers, health plans, health care clearinghouses, their business associates, employers and other plan sponsors, banks and other financial institutions, and others on risk management and compliance with HIPAA, FACTA, trade secret and other information privacy and data security rules, including the establishment, documentation, implementation, audit and enforcement of policies, procedures, systems and safeguards, investigating and responding to known or suspected breaches, defending investigations or other actions by plaintiffs, OCR and other federal or state agencies, reporting known or suspected violations, business associate and other contracting, commenting or obtaining other clarification of guidance, training and and enforcement, and a host of other related concerns. Her clients include public and private health care providers, health insurers, health plans, technology and other vendors, and others.
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Posted by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer	When Trust Matters, Preparations Critical
Actual or perceived disloyalty or other reaches of Trece is one of the quickest ways to destroy a working relationship between an a business and its management or other employees or other service providers.
Heading off problems begins with both the management of a business and those providing services to it understanding the call mama and other conflict of interest, loyalty and other responsibilities of the service provider to the businesses
Historically, the common law has recognized that common law management and other employees – but not necessarily independent contractors or other non common law employee service providers – owe a duty of loyalty to their employer that among other things. Inventions, knowledge and other value created by an employee and value derived from the employee generally are presumed the property of the employee under the doctrine of “works for hire.” An employee’s common law duty of loyalty generally also prihibits the employee from engaging in competition with the employer, self dealing, or conflicts of interest unless the the employee proves the employee consented after full disclosure of relevant facts by the employee.
In the age of federal sentencing guidelines and other federal and state internal controls mandates, carefully crafted loyalty, conflict of interest, confidentiality and trade secret, nonsolicitation, noncompete and other provisions in employee contracts, handbooks and policies can promote important regulatory risk management and compliance goals as well as deter employee breaches of loyalty by educating the employee of their duty, limit or overrun statutorial restrictions on some of these common law duties, and otherwise strengthen the ability of an employer to enforce these duties in the event of a violation.
As the common law does not necessarily apply these same duties of loyalty automatically businesses of contractor and other no traditional worker or other service provider relationships, however, ensuring that independent contractors and other nontraditional service providers are engaged pursuant to written agreements that include carefully crafted provisions that clearly reserve the business’ exclusive or other ownership of created products, internal controls mandates, and loyalty, conflict of interest, confidentiality and trade secret, nonsolicitation, noncompete and other safeguards can be critical to protect the interests of the business.
Whether dealing with employees or other service providers, today’s privacy and other limits on business investigatory powers also create a strong demand for businesses to back up their ability to investigate and redress these and other breaches by adopting and requiring all service providers to consent or otherwise be subject to appropriate disclaimers of privacy, computer and other use and monitoring, pre, concurrent and post terminationinvestigation, disclosure, cooperation, and other policies.
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Posted by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer	IRS Changing Employee Plans & Exempt Organization Audit Procedures
Employee benefit plans and tax-exempt organizations facing Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits or investigations after April, 2016, their leaders and advisors should prepare for some changes in the practices IRS agents will use to issue and enforce document requests (IDRs) after March 31.
The IRS Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division (TEGE) just issued updated internal guidance (Guidance) governing the procedures its agents will use to gather information for employee benefit plan and exempt organization examinations including information requests made in connection with:
Employee Benefit Form 5500 Examination Procedures
Exempt Organizations Pre-Audit Procedures
Tax Exempt Bonds Examinations
Indian Tribal Government Examinations and
Federal, State and Local Governments (FSLG) Examinations
The new Guidance follows other recent announcements of changes of IRS employee plan or exempt organization procedures such as recently announced changes in IRS employee plan correction procedures. See, e.g., IRS Qualified Plan Correction Procedures Changing 1/1/17.
The new procedures defined in the Guidance apply more broadly and take effect April 1, 2017. The Guidance also requires that TEGE update the following IRMs to specifically reflect the new procedures within the next two years:
IRM 4.71.1, Overview of Form 5500 Examination Procedures;
IRM 4.75.10, Exempt Organizations Pre-Audit Procedures;
IRM 4.75.11, On-Site Examination Guidelines;
IRM 4.81.5, Tax Exempt Bonds Examination Program Procedures – Conducting the Examination;
IRM 4.86.5, Conducting Indian Tribal Government Examinations; and
IRM 4.90.9, Federal, State and Local Governments (FSLG) – Procedures, Workpapers and Report Writing.
Among other things, the new Guidance will require “active involvement” by managers of IRS examiners’ early in the process. The Guidance also calls for:
Taxpayers to be involved in the IDR process.
Examiners to discuss the issue being examined and the information needed with the taxpayer prior to issuing an IDR.
Examiners to ensure that the IDR clearly states the issue and the relevant information they are requesting.
If the taxpayer does not timely provide the information requested in the IDR by the agreed upon date, including extensions, examiners to issue a delinquency notice.
If the taxpayer fails to respond to the delinquency notice or provides an incomplete response, for the examiner to issue a pre-summons notice to advise the taxpayer that the IRS will issue a summons unless the missing items are fully provided.
For a summons to be issued if the taxpayer fails to provide a complete response to the pre-summons letter by its response due date.
According to TEGE the new procedures set forth in the Guidance are designed to “ensure” that IRS Counsel is prepared to enforce IDRs through the issuance of a summons when necessary while also reinforcing the IRS’ commitment to the respect of taxpayer rights under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. TEGE says the updated procedures established in the Guidance will promote these goals by:
Providing for open and meaningful communication between the IRS and taxpayers;
Reducing taxpayer burdens
Providing for consistent treatment of taxpayers;
Allowing the IRS to secure more complete and timely responses to IDRs;
Providing consistent timelines for IRS agents to review IDR responses; and
Promoting timely issue resolution.
While it remains to be seen exactly how well the new procedures will promote these goals in operation, leaders, sponsors, administrators and tax advisors to employee benefit plans and exempt organizations tagged for audits after the Guidelines take effect will want to ensure that they review and fully understand the new procedures as soon as possible after receiving notice of the audit.
A clear understanding of the procedures can help the entities and their representatives to take advantage of all available options for mitigating exposures and liability from the audit as well as to avoid unfortunate missteps that could result in forfeiture of otherwise available tax-related rights and options or otherwise increase the tax and other associated risks and liabilities of the entities or others associated with them arising from the audit.
Along with responding to these tax-related risks, leaders and advisors of employee benefit plan and exempt organizations also need to keep in mind the often substantial non-tax related risks that may arise concurrently or evolve from a TEGE or other tax-related audit or investigation. The often substantial tax and non-tax exposures typically makes it desirable if not necessary to involve experienced legal counsel in the process as soon as possible.
To help respond to the audit and manage its tax and non-tax related risks and, leaders responsible for these entities generally not only will want to seek legal advice within the scope of attorney-client privilege from legal counsel immediately after receiving an IDR or other notice of an audit or investigation, as well as consider periodically consulting experienced legal counsel for assistance in conducting pre-audit assessment of compliance and other compliance and risk management planning.
Early involvement of legal counsel generally is necessary both to understand and manage both the tax and non-tax exposures associated with the audit, as well as to preserve and utilize the potential benefits of attorney-client privilege and other evidentiary privileges that could help to mitigate both the tax and non-tax related risks. While federal tax rules afford some evidentiary privileges to certain accounting professionals when providing tax representation or advice, the protective scope of such privileges generally are more limited than attorney-client privilege and work product evidentiary privileges and typically do not apply to non-tax matters. As a result, most entities and their leaders will want to consider involvement of legal counsel to maximize privilege protections and non-tax related exposures even if the parties plan for a qualified tax professional or other consultant to play a significant role in assisting them to prepare for and respond to the audit.
Recognized by her peers as a Martindale-Hubble “AV-Preeminent” (Top 1%) and “Top Rated Lawyer” with special recognition LexisNexis® Martindale-Hubbell® as “LEGAL LEADER™ Texas Top Rated Lawyer” in Health Care Law and Labor and Employment Law; as among the “Best Lawyers In Dallas” for her work in the fields of “Labor & Employment,” “Tax: Erisa & Employee Benefits,” “Health Care” and “Business and Commercial Law” by D Magazine, Cynthia Marcotte Stamer is a practicing attorney and management consultant, author, public policy advocate and lecturer widely known for work, teachings and publications.
Ms. Stamer works with health industry and other businesses and their management, employee benefit plans, governments and other organizations deal with all aspects of human resources and workforce, internal controls and regulatory compliance, change management and other performance and operations management and compliance. She supports her clients both on a real-time, “on demand” basis and with longer term basis to deal with daily performance management and operations, emerging crises, strategic planning, process improvement and change management, investigations, defending litigation, audits, investigations or other enforcement challenges, government affairs and public policy.
Congress Passes Joint Resolution Overturning NLRB “Quickie Election Rule”
Circular 230 Compliance. The following disclaimer is included to ensure that we comply with U.S. Treasury Department Regulations. Any statements contained herein are not intended or written by the writer to be used, and nothing contained herein can be used by you or any other person, for the purpose of (1) avoiding penalties that may be imposed under federal tax law, or (2) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any tax-related transaction or matter addressed herein
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