In Inside Health Policy, Health Care Partner Analyzes Proposed Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute Reforms
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently released proposals to change the Stark Law physician self-referral and the anti-kickback regulations in order to ease health care providers’ participation in value-based health care payment models.
In an Inside Health Policy article published on Oct. 16, health care partner Tom Bulleit (Washington, D.C.) analyzes the proposed reforms. Mr. Bulleit’s comments note that the proposed rules would provide three levels of protected value-based arrangements, with the requirements and levels of documentation being lighter as more risk is assumed. He marks physicians, hospitals and other healthcare providers as ‘winners’ under the rule, while laboratories, drug manufacturers, and at least some medical device makers would lose out. He suggests that the final rule may allow participation in value-based arrangements for the sale of some medical devices, but others (for example, physician preference items like orthopedic or cardiac implants) seem more likely to have to wait for future rulemaking to obtain significant relief.