Home Health & Hospice Week

Another Affordable Care Act provision may affect you if you run into trouble with your physician relationships. The measure, which the health care reform law refers to as the Medicare self-referral disclosure protocol (SDRP), provides a way for providers with actual or potential Stark (self-referral) violations to come clean. Providers can "confess their sins to the [HHS Office of Inspector General] and get special consideration," says attorney Michael Cassidy, in Pittsburgh, Pa. "It's almost like where you can selfdisclose to the Internal Revenue Service and therefore don't get the severe penalties," he adds. "The SRDP requires health care providers ... to submit all information necessary for CMS ... to analyze the actual or potential violation" of the Stark law, CMS says in a message to providers. The provision "gives the Secretary of [the Department of Health and Human Services] the authority to reduce the amount due and owing for violations." The [...]