The Push to Change the Stark Law
By Admin | March 16, 2016
A new performance-based payment model, created to encourage hospitals and physicians to collaborate, may violate the Stark Law, a piece of legislation originally intended to prevent self-referrals between doctors and hospitals,
The new pay-for-performance model intends to save hospitals money and improve patient care, however there is grey area about its compliance with the quarter-century old law. The American Hospital Association (AHA) wants Congress to build in a physician-referral safe harbor in order to protect doctors and hospitals from violating this older piece of legislation.
How the law defines the word referral is where the issues live. Coordinating the five phases of surgical care (pre-operative, peri-operative, intra-operative, post-operative and post-discharge) may not comply with the law.
To read more about the new changes to the Stark Law and the demands and incentives of the new safe harbors, read the article ‘Medicare Forces Hospitals to Violate Stark Law – or Lose Funding.’
