Other, Stark Law Essays Examples

Stark Law

The Stark Law is a federal law that prohibits physicians or doctors from referring the Medicare patients to entities with which these patients have financial relationships, including compensation arrangements and ownership interests. The violation of this law occurs in various instances and can incur civil fines, criminal penalties, loss of medical licenses and exclusion from federal programs of healthcare (Beach, Bert, Friedman, & Glaser, 2002).
Under this Final Rule, for instance, a leasing company of diagnostic equipment owned indirectly or directly by the referring physicians cannot lease equipment to hospitals on per-click basis if the physician owners will continue referring to the hospital. In that scenario, the physicians leased the equipment to avoid referring their patients to the local hospital. As such, they were within the provisions of the Stark Law.
Despite the fact that the Stark Law permitted per-click payments, the Final Rule prohibits such payment methodologies and leasing arrangements. However, the two physicians did not violate the Stark Law. Additionally, the Final Rule as provided in the Stark Law does not prohibit the per-click arrangements of compensation that involve the lessors who are non-physician-owned to the extent that if such lessors do not continue referring the patients for various designated health services (Romano, Anderman, & Fisher, n.d). In addition, it does not prohibit the lessors for the services they render to all the patients not referred to the lessees by all the involved physician lessors.
In the scenario, the two physicians are lessors, non-physician owned. For this reason, the Stark Law does not prohibit them because it does not prohibit them for the compensation and leasing arrangements (Romano, Anderman, & Fisher, n.d). Additionally, they intended to render their services to the patients not referred to the lessees by their physician lessors. For this reason, since the law does not prohibit such arrangements as Dr. V and S’s, they did not violate the law. Additionally, it is unclear whether the two physicians handed financial interest when they leased the equipment. They did not violate the law, which also states that there have to be fee payments in the space or the equipment leases.
In addition to the restrictions on the per-click payments provided in the Final Rule of the Stark Law, the on-demand agreements of rentals are deemed as per-use arrangements or per-click. The physicians did not rent the equipment, neither were there payment restrictions, which suggests their actions were within the provisions of the Stark Law (Romano, Anderman, & Fisher, n.d.). The Final Rule does not also prohibit the all-time based arrangements of leasing such as block time leases. However, in the scenario, it is unclear whether the lease was on a time-based agreement, which suggests that it is questionable to conceive that they violated the Stark Law. In summary, the actions of the two physicians were within and not against the provisions of the Stark Law.

References

Beach, W. R., Bert, J. M., Friedman, M. M., & Glaser, D. (2002). Practice management: Update on coding, ancillary services, and the new stark laws. Arthroscopy-the Journal of Arthroscopic and Related Surgery. doi:10.1053/jars.2002.36508
Romano, D., Anderman, J., & Fisher, M. (n.d.). What Is Stark Law?, 2014. Print.