In early May 2024, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) agreed to pay $38 million to resolve a False Claims Act case based on alleged Stark Law violations. The size of the settlement in United States ex rel. J....more
Under the federal Stark law, hospitals and other healthcare employers may require that employed or contracted physicians refer items or services to the hospital or another designated provider subject to certain limits. (42...more
In its recent Final Rule significantly revising the federal Physician Self-Referral Law (Stark Law), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) implements several important changes to the special rules on...more
On October 17, 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) formally published its proposed rule (the PSR Rule) to update exceptions to the Physician Self-Referral Law (PSR Law, also known as the Stark Law). For...more
On October 9, 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid ("CMS") and Office of Inspector General ("OIG"), respectively, published proposed rules updating the long-standing physician...more
The Stark Law was originally enacted by Congress in 1989 as the Ethics in Patient Referrals Act. Initially, it prohibited a physician from referring Medicare beneficiaries to clinical labs in which the physician had an...more
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently issued Advisory Opinion 15-15 and concluded that an arrangement under which a hospital proposed to provide transcription services to a radiology practice in exchange for fair...more
After the federal government’s victory against Tuomey Hospital, we have seen an increasing number of large False Claims Act (FCA) settlements with hospitals involving Stark Law allegations. Relators are even citing, as...more