On August 24, 2018, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a request for information, seeking input from the public on potential new safe harbors to the Anti-Kickback Statute and exceptions to the beneficiary inducement prohibition in the Civil Monetary Penalty (CMP) Law to remove impediments to care coordination and value-based care. The broad scope of the laws involved and the wide-ranging nature of OIG’s request underscore the…

On June 25, 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published a request for information, seeking input from the public on how to address any undue regulatory impact and burden of the physician self-referral law (Stark Law) on value-based and other coordinated care arrangements designed to improve quality and lower cost. While the overall focus of CMS’s request for information is on the Stark Law’s actual or perceived barriers to innovation, the…

On May 31, 2017, the US Department of Justice announced a Settlement Agreement under which eClinicalWorks, a vendor of electronic health record software, agreed to pay $155 million and enter into a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement to resolve allegations that it caused its customers to submit false claims for Medicare and Medicaid meaningful use payments in violation of the False Claims Act. Read the full article.…

In a case of first impression, a federal court found that the federal physician self-referral law’s (Stark Law) requirement that financial arrangements with physicians be memorialized in a signed writing could be material to the government’s payment decision. This case raises troubling questions about applying the False Claims Act (FCA) to what many in the industry consider “technical” Stark issues, especially given the Supreme Court’s description of the materiality test as “demanding” and not satisfied…

On December 7, 2016, the Office of Inspector General of the US Department of Health and Human Services published a final rule containing revisions to both the federal Anti-Kickback Statute safe harbors and the beneficiary inducement prohibition in the civil monetary penalty rules. Effective January 6, 2017, the Final Rule modifies certain existing safe harbors and adds additional safe harbors to the Anti-Kickback Statute and incorporates Affordable Care Act-mandated exceptions into the definition of remuneration…

On December 7, 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a policy statement increasing its thresholds for gifts that are considered “nominal” for purposes of the patient inducement provisions of the civil monetary penalties law (section 1128A(a)(5) of the Social Security Act) (CMP Law). HHS also announced the new thresholds in the preamble to a final rule issued on December 7, 2016, revising…