LEGAL ISSUES Stark III self-referral prohibitions

The new Stark rules: what does Stark II Phase III mean for healthcare providers?

Senator Pete Stark, sponsor of the Physician Self-Referral Law, was recently quoted as saying he wished he had never sponsored the law due to its now complex requirements and iterations imposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The new Stark II Phase III rules further muddy the waters. This article reviews the basic Stark prohibitions and provides an overview of Stark II Phase III.

Stark regulation: a historical and current review of the self-referral laws.

Physician refer thyself: is Stark II, phase III the final voyage?

The United States spends more of its wealth on healthcare than any other developed country, and that share is rising. Supporters of the free market system point to the regulatory burden on the healthcare industry. Estimates of the regulatory costs of US healthcare range from dollars 58 billion to dollars 339 billion. A recent report indicates that approximately dollars 8 billion of the US healt...

Training community hospital residents for a future in the hospital's community – what program directors should know about Stark Laws

S ome have argued that physicians have difficulty regulating themselves (an argument recently echoed by the ACGME, in fact), and they often point to physician laboratory and radiology self-referral abuses that occurred throughout the 1980s as their major talking point. These discussions led to a series of federal laws, referred to collectively as the Stark Laws (after California Congressman Pet...

The "Stark" reality: is the federal physician self-referral law bad for the health care industry?