The Physician Self-Referral Law<\/strong>, commonly known as the \u00a0Stark Law<\/strong>, places restrictions on physician self referrals for Medicare and Medicaid patients. The legislation, found at 42 U.S.C. \u00a7 1395nn, is named for Congressman Peter Stark, who sponsored the bill.\u00a0A self referral is regarded as a physician making a referral to a medical facility with which the physician has\u00a0a financial relationship. \u00a0This includes ownership , investment, or a compensatory arrangement with a medical facility.<\/p>\n The law is designed\u00a0to prevent conflicts of interest and overutilization of services, both of which may act to drive up healthcare costs by preventing competition in the market place.\u00a0\u00a0It became effective in 1992 under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989 (ORBA 1989), was updated in ORBA 1993, and again in 1997.<\/p>\n The Stark Law and federal Anti-Kickback Statute are similar in that they intended to prevent anyone from making or receiving payments to induce referrals for federal healthcare programs. \u00a0However, the Anti-Kickback Statute prevents anyone, not just physicians, from making self referrals for any federal healthcare programs, not just designated health services like Medicare and Medicaid. \u00a0Another key difference between the Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute is that the Anti-Kickback Statute requires the prosecution show that the defendant had a knowing and willful intent to break the law. The prosecution does not need to prove intent to prevail on a Stark Law\u00a0claim, but intent may be\u00a0required in order to recover certain monetary penalties. In other words, the Stark Law is a so-called \u201cstrict liability\u201d offense and may be violated without any intent to do so and ignorance is not a defense.<\/p>\n Sanctions and penalties for violations of the Stark Law (Physician Self-Referral Law) include:<\/p>\n Violators of the Stark Law may face criminal penalties of $25,000 in fines per violation and a five year prison sentence. \u00a0Civil penalties may be brought forward under the False Claims Act on behalf of the government and collect fines of three times the kickback received, a $50,000 fine for each violation, and an exclusion from federal healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Violators of the Physician Self-Referral Law may also be required to refund any\u00a0overpayments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":1633,"menu_order":71,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":""},"categories":[],"is_parent":[],"class_list":["post-1580","practice_areas","type-practice_areas","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/washington-dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/practice_areas\/1580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/washington-dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/practice_areas"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/washington-dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/practice_areas"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/washington-dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/practice_areas\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/washington-dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/washington-dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"is_parent","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/washington-dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/is_parent?post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Stark Law and Anti-kickback Statute<\/b><\/h3>\n
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