Monthly Archives: April 2016
What is the Stark Law? And Why Is It Important to You?
It seems apropos that a US Congressman was named Pete Stark who first sponsored what came to be known as the Stark law, because the Stark law mandates stark penalties for financially driven physician referrals. Get it? Cheesy, I know.
The Stark law (42 U.S.C. 1395nn) prohibits physician referrals of designated health services (DHR) for Medicare and Medicaid if the physician has a financial interest with the “referred to” agency.
For example, Dr. Goneril is an internist. As an investment, he and his partner, Dr. Regan open a local laboratory “Gloucester” and hire Mr. Lear to run Gloucester. Drs. Goneril and Regan are silent partners. Dr. Goneril orders blood work on Patient Cordelia and refers her to Gloucester.
The above example would be a direct violation of the Stark law.
The penalties are severe. If caught, Dr. Goneril would have to repay all money received for services in which he referred Cordelia to Gloucester. In addition, he could be penalized $15,000 for every time he improperly referred Cordelia, plus three times the amount of improper payment he received from the Medicare/caid program, possible termination from the Medicare/caid program, and penalties of up to $100,000 for every time he tried to circumvent the Stark law.
On the federal level, the Department of Justice, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) are tasked with enforcing the Stark law.
Recent years have seen the most Stark law violations since its inception and it is only being enforced more and more.
On June 9, 2015, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a fraud alert regarding the Stark law. Investigations since June 2015 has risen significantly.
Here are some recent Stark settlements (for you to understand the severity):
- Adventist Health System agreed to pay $118.7 million to the federal government and to multiple states.
- Columbus Regional Healthcare System is paying $25 million.
- Citizens Medical Center in Victoria, Texas, agreed to pay $21.75 million.
“O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars / Are in the poorest thing superfluous. / Allow not nature more than nature needs, / Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s.” (King Lear, II, iv).
How do you defend yourself if you are accused of a Stark violation?
First and foremost, hire a qualified health care attorney. There are exceptions to the Stark law which, hopefully, you fall within. Furthermore, there are multiple legal arguments that can abate penalties. You do not always want to settle.There have been a number of agencies, that recently, decided to never settle. Oddly enough, the number of their audits decreased. Maybe the government targets easy money.
There Is Only One Head Chef in the Medicaid Kitchen, Part Deux!
In a groundbreaking decision published today by the Court of Appeals (COA), the Court smacked down Public Consulting Group’s (PCG), as well as any other contracted entity’s, authority to wield an “adverse decision” against a health care provider. This solidifies my legal argument that I have been arguing on this blog and in court for years!
The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is the “single state agency” charged with managing Medicaid. Federal law requires that that one agency manage Medicaid with no ability to delegate discretionary decisions. Case law in K.C. v. Shipman upheld the federal law. See blog.
Yet, despite K.C. v. Shipman, decided in 2013, in Court, DHHS continued to argue that it should be dismissed from cases in which a contracted vendor rendered the adverse decision to recoup, terminate, or suspend a health care provider. DHHS would argue that it had no part of the decision to recoup, terminate, or suspend, that K.C. Shipman is irrelevant to health care provider cases, and that K.C. v. Shipman is only pertinent to Medicaid recipient cases, to which I countered until I was “blue in the face” is a pile of horse manure.
DHHS would argue that my interpretation would break down the Medicaid system because DHHS cannot possibly review and discern whether every recoupment, termination, and/or suspension made by a contracted vendor was valid (my words, not theirs). DHHS argued that it simply does not have the manpower, plus if it has the authority to contract with a company, surely that company can determine the amount of an alleged overpayment…WRONG!!
In fact, in DHHS v. Parker Home Care, LLC, the COA delineates the exact process for the State determining an overpayment with its contracted agent PCG.
- DHHS may enter into a contract with a company, such as PCG.
- A private company, like PCG, may perform preliminary and full investigations to collect facts and data.
- PCG must submit its findings to DHHS, and DHHS must exercise its own discretion to reach a tentative decision from six options (enumerated in the NC Administrative Code).
- DHHS, after its decision, will notify the provider of its tentative decision.
- The health care provider may request a reconsideration of the tentative decision within 15 days.
- Failure to do so will transform the tentative decision into a final determination.
- Time to appeal to OAH begins upon notification of the final determination by DHHS (60 days).
Another interesting part of this decision is that the provider, Parker Home Care, received the Tentative Notice of Overpayment (TNO) in 2012 and did nothing. The provider did not appeal the TNO.
However, because PCG’s TNO did not constitute a final adverse decision by DHHS (because PCG does not have the authority to render a final adverse decision), the provider did not miss any appeal deadline. The final adverse decision was determined to be DHHS’ action of suspending funds to collect the recoupment, which did not occur until 2014…and THAT action was timely appealed.
The COA’s message to private vendors contracted with DHHS is crystal clear: “There is only one head chef in the Medicaid kitchen.”
