On June 25, 2018, the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services (“OIG”) published Advisory Opinion 18-05, allowing a nonprofit medical center to provide or arrange for certain support services for individuals who care for adults with chronic medical conditions (the “Opinion”).  The Opinion is significant because it helps to define the limits of recently enacted exceptions to the Civil Monetary Penalties Law (“CMP Law”).  In addition, the…

On June 20, 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) published an advance copy of a request for information seeking public input on reforms to the Physician Self-Referral Law (or “Stark Law”). The request for information stems from on-going efforts by the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) to accelerate the government’s transformation from a fee-for-service to a value-based system focused on care coordination.  Dubbed the “Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care” (…

Recent settlement agreements between the United States Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) and two urologist business partners suggests that the government may be focusing increased enforcement efforts on the Stark Law’s “group practice” requirements and the Stark exception for “in-office ancillary services.”  The urologists agreed to pay over $1 million to resolve the allegations. In early January 2018, the DOJ entered into settlement agreements with Dr. Aytac Apaydin and Stephen Worsham to resolve allegations that…

On April 18, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida adopted a magistrate judge’s recommendation to grant summary judgment in favor of defendant BayCare Health System (“BayCare”) in a False Claims Act whistleblower suit that focused on physician lease agreements in a hospital-owned medical office building, thereby dismissing the whistleblower’s suit. The whistleblower, a local real-estate appraiser, alleged that BayCare improperly induced Medicare referrals in violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute…