Past due closing week, the Division of Well being and Human Products and services Place of job of the Inspector Basic (“OIG”) posted Advisory Opinion No. 23-07 maintaining the wide coverage to be had for repayment to hired physicians beneath the bona fide worker exception and secure harbor to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (the “AKS”). The opinion highlights flexibility for healthcare suppliers searching for to compensate staff in ways in which align incentives with their employers, and specifically for doctor practices to align hired physicians with use of the practices’ ambulatory surgical procedure heart (“ASC”) features.
Within the opinion, the OIG regarded as a proposed bonus repayment method for doctor staff of a multi-specialty doctor follow (the “Observe”). The Observe operates two ASCs, every as a company department inside of the similar felony entity because the Observe. Beneath the proposed bonus method, doctor staff of the Observe who carried out procedures on the ASCs would obtain thirty % of the Observe’s web income from the ASC facility charge collections for the ones procedures.
The OIG opined that, even supposing the bonus method would implicate the AKS, it could be secure by way of the statutory exception and regulatory secure harbor for staff. In particular, the Observe qualified that each one bonus recipients could be bona fide staff of the Observe, and the repayment could be paid for “employment within the furnishing of any merchandise or carrier for which fee could also be made…beneath Medicare, Medicaid, or different Federal well being care methods.”
Significantly, the OIG used to be transparent that “a an identical association involving bonus bills to unbiased contractor physicians or different nonemployees or beneath a unique company construction (wherein, for instance, the physicians have been house owners of the ASCs and paid themselves the bonuses pondered by way of the proposed association as possession distribution) might lift fraud and abuse considerations beneath the [AKS]”, since “[p]ayment buildings that tie repayment to income generated from products and services furnished to sufferers referred by way of the compensated celebration are suspect beneath the [AKS].” The proposed association could be permissible particularly on account of the applying of the bona fide worker exception and secure harbor and “in spite of the prospective dangers of fraud and abuse….”
In achieving its conclusion, the OIG reaffirmed core structural options of the AKS and its embedded protections for worker repayment, together with that healthcare suppliers have wide flexibility in figuring out the way to compensate their staff, and that even repayment buildings that can elevate fraud and abuse possibility are secure if the repayment meets the necessities of an exception or secure harbor. Those rules might be offering vital flexibility to practices searching for to align incentives for hired physicians, specifically inside of practices that experience ASC features. The OIG’s basic suspicion of repayment methodologies that hyperlink fee to income generated by way of a clinician, then again, underscores the significance of operating intently with felony suggest in creating suitable repayment buildings, specifically for complicated healthcare organizations. The contributors of the Sheppard Mullin Healthcare Crew are to be had to respond to your questions and to lend a hand your company succeed in trade objectives whilst keeping up compliance with the legislation.
