The Key to Working with Physicians is Understanding the new STARK Law Guidance

The Key to Working with Physicians is Understanding the new STARK Law Guidance: Physician relationships are key to succeeding in today’s competitive environment and DME suppliers that work on building those relationships will flourish.  Unfortunately because the government has chosen to regulate the healthcare industry this means that what is allowed in other industries may not be allowed in healthcare.  The STARK Law is one of those regulations that changes the rules.  The STARK law was put in place to prohibit over utilization by physicians be creating limits to a physician’s ability to refer to an entity in which the physician has a financial relationship. As a result, anytime a supplier has a financial relationship with a physician, the supplier must analyze its activities for compliance with STARK. STARK was first enacted in 1989 and over time the reimbursement models have evolved from almost exclusively fee for service to a value based models.  CMS has recently issued new guidance and exceptions to STARK that address value based compensation models.  This program will discuss recently published STARK guidance that applies to relationships between suppliers and  physicians.  Understanding this new guidance will be important to working with physicians as suppliers develop these key relationships.

Archive