Medical Facility Enforcement Actions
| Submitted | April 25, 2023 |
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Communications
From: Siobhan Standaert
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the New Hampshire Right to Know Law, I hereby request the following records:
Copies of all state healthcare facility enforcement actions with monetary penalties imposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. This includes penalties against any type of medical facility, including nursing homes, hospitals, or other outpatient treatment facilities. Records should span between the year 2000 to present, or reach as far back as is readily available. There are certain essential fields necessary: name of facility, location (county, city), date of penalty announcement, and dollar amount of penalty. I'm not in need of the individual documents associated with these corrections, just the penalty data.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Siobhan Standaert
From: Department of Health and Human Services
Good afternoon Siobhan. I am in receipt of your Right to Know request. In New Hampshire we have two types of medical and residential facilities: those that are licensed only and those that are both licensed and certified. Certified means that the facility is certified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to participate in those programs. Examples of facilities that are licensed only include Residential Care Facilities, Supported Residential Health Care Facilities and Walk-in Care Facilities. In other words, these are facilities that do not receive reimbursement from CMS. Examples of facilities that are both licensed and certified include Hospitals, Nursing homes and most Ambulatory Surgical Centers. Information relative to fines imposed against facilities that are licensed only is confidential under RSA 151:13 and is exempt from disclosure under RSA 91-A:5,IV. RSA 151:13 reads as follows:
151:13 Information Confidential. – Information received or created by the department of health and human services, through inspection or otherwise, authorized hereunder shall be confidential and shall not be disclosed publicly except in a proceeding involving the question of licensure or revocation of license pursuant to RSA 541-A. The department may disclose such information after it denies, suspends or revokes a license pursuant to RSA 151:7, II.
DHHS does not impose fines against facilities that are certified. Rather it is CMS that does that. For the above reasons, your Right to Know request is denied due to the fact that DHHS does not have any public records that are responsive to your request. Below is a link to the Enforcement Actions page of the CMS website.
Enforcement Actions | CMS<https://www.cms.gov/hospital-price-transparency/enforcement-actions>
Part C and Part D Enforcement Actions | CMS<https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Compliance-and-Audits/Part-C-and-Part-D-Compliance-and-Audits/PartCandPartDEnforcementActions->
John B. Martin, Deputy Chief Legal Counsel
Department of Health and Human Services
Office of Legal and Regulatory Services
Bureau of General Counsel
129 Pleasant Street
Concord, NH 03301
603/271-9256
603/271-5590 (Fax)
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