False Claims Act Insights - Physician, Refer Thyself: How Stark Law and FCA Intersect
2022 Resolutions: What Healthcare Practices Need To Tackle In the New Year
Goran Musinovic on Healthcare Real Estate Compliance
Podcast: CMS and OIG Final Rules for Innovating Your Value-Based Payment Program - Diagnosing Health Care
Compliance Perspectives: Changes to the Physician Self-Referral and Anti-Kickback Rules
Anti Kickback and Stark Law Enforcement and Compliance Issues
Welcome to the Summer 2024 issue of “FCA Enforcement & Compliance Digest,” our quarterly newsletter in which we compile essential updates on False Claims Act (FCA) enforcement trends, litigation, agency guidance, and...more
Hear directly from the enforcement community - Want to gain insight into properly monitoring, detecting, investigating, and managing violations? Join us at HCCA’s Annual Healthcare Enforcement Compliance Conference to...more
Please join us for the 8th Annual Nashville Healthcare Fraud Conference hosted by Bass, Berry & Sims and the Tennessee Hospital Association. Eligible for more than seven hours of CLE credit (including ethics), this...more
Hear directly from the enforcement community - Want to gain insight into properly monitoring, detecting, investigating, and managing violations? Join us virtually at HCCA’s Annual Healthcare Enforcement Compliance...more
Learning Objectives: - Impact 2021 Physician Fee Schedule has had/will have on Physician Compensation and Benchmark Data - Impact COVID has had/will have on Physician Compensation - Evolution of Use of Benchmark Data,...more
The Situation: Under the federal Physician Self-Referral Law ("Stark Law"), many physician arrangements must meet one or more of the so-called "big three" requirements: that the arrangement be "commercially reasonable," that...more
Report on Medicare Compliance Volume 29, no. 32 (September 14, 2020) - Wheeling Hospital in West Virginia has agreed to pay $50 million to settle a False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit over physician compensation, the Department...more
On December 20, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit granted in part a petition for rehearing filed by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) in a False Claims Act (FCA) case that has generated...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently issued a False Claims Act (FCA) decision calling into question productivity-based physician compensation structures under the Stark Law, in reliance on a controversial...more
On September 17, 2019, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision with potentially far-reaching consequences involving the Stark Act. The case, United States ex rel. Bookwalter v. UPMC, involves allegations that a...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit endorsed two controversial interpretations of the Stark Law’s “volume or value” standard, known as the correlation theory and the practice “loss” theory in U.S. ex rel. J. William...more
On July 31, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision to grant summary judgment to hospital operator HCA and dismiss relator Thomas Bingham’s allegations. Bingham v. HCA (S.D....more
On December 12, 2018, Aurora Health Care (Aurora), a Wisconsin-based healthcare system, entered into a settlement agreement with the United States and the State of Wisconsin to pay $12 million to resolve allegations that...more
Some recent changes in federal law and in federal agency interpretation of federal law may both clarify and relieve some regulatory obligations of health care providers. Lessening Dependence on Federal Agency...more
If you navigate to the American Hospital Association (AHA) Interactive Town Hall of January 17, 2018, you can view a video in which Seema Verma, the current Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,...more
The settlement described below highlights the importance of carefully structuring compensation arrangements with referring physicians, and the risk involved in trying to work backwards to achieve a desired level of...more
Congress has acknowledged that the Stark law is standing in the way of the healthcare industry's transition to alternative, value-based payment models, and in turn, meaningful reform may soon be on the horizon. Last...more
At a July 12, 2016 hearing entitled “Examining the Stark Law: Current Issues and Opportunities,” members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee expressed openness to potentially significant amendments to the Stark Law aimed at...more
On June 30, 2016, the Senate Finance Committee’s Republican staff issued a 20-page report discussing comments made by industry stakeholders after a December 2015 round-table on the future of the physician self-referral law,...more
If you are an employer in the health care or defense industry, in addition to compliance with the panoply of employment laws you must adhere to, employers must also be attuned to their exposure to whistleblower claims under...more
After 10 years of litigation, including two trials and appeals to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Tuomey Healthcare System (Tuomey) have entered into a settlement of DOJ's action...more
With Halloween looming, a discussion of skeletons that may be lurking in a health care provider’s closet is timely. Many of our previous posts, as well as the monthly Qui Tam Updates published by our Health Care Enforcement...more
The Department of Justice announced on October 16, 2015 a settlement agreement with Tuomey Healthcare System that resolves a $237 million judgment against the system involving claims submitted to the Medicare program in...more
After the federal government’s victory against Tuomey Hospital, we have seen an increasing number of large False Claims Act (FCA) settlements with hospitals involving Stark Law allegations. Relators are even citing, as...more
Okay, there’s not really a Most-Illegal-Physician-Compensation Prize. But if there were, Florida’s North Broward Hospital District would have won in a walk. That’s why the district has agreed to pay the government $69.5...more