Abstract
Scholars and legal practitioners have long debated the virtues and vices of integrated models of health care delivery and financing. Few such models have been as promising or as rapidly adopted as Accountable Care Organizations (“ACOs”), the latest concept in delivering cost-effective, high-quality health care. Implementation of pre-ACO models, however, never required extensive grants of immunity to providers and suppliers from the federal Stark physician self-referral law (“Stark”) and other fraud and abuse laws. The broad waivers issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) for implementing ACOs raise unprecedented legal questions concerning Stark’s application to these hospital/physician arrangements designed to decrease costs. Furthermore, the waivers represent new opportunities to reconcile, through rulemaking, the cost savings of ACOs with their attendant risks of physician abuse or patient harm accomplished through Stark-proscribed self-referral.
Recommended Citation
Note, The Stark Physician Self-Referral Law and Accountable Care Organizations: Collision Course or Opportunity to Reconcile Federal Anti-Abuse and Cost-Saving Legislation?, 26 J.L. & Health 315 (2013)