Flower Mound Hospital Partners, a partially physician-owned hospital in Texas, has agreed to pay $18.2 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by knowingly submitting claims to the Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE programs that resulted from violations of the Physician Self-Referral Law and the Anti‑Kickback Statute, the Justice Department said in a news release.
The Physician Self‑Referral Law, commonly known as the Stark Law, prohibits a hospital from billing for certain services referred by physicians with whom the hospital has a financial relationship, unless that relationship satisfies one of the law’s statutory or regulatory exceptions. The Anti‑Kickback Statute prohibits offering or paying remuneration to induce the referral of items or services covered by Medicare, Medicaid and other federally funded programs. Both the Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback Statute are intended to ensure that medical judgments are not compromised by improper financial inducements.
The settlement resolves allegations that the hospital violated the Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback Statute when it repurchased shares from physician-owners aged 63 and older, then resold the shares to younger physicians. The government alleges that Flower Mound impermissibly took into account the volume or value of certain physicians’ referrals when it selected the physicians to whom the shares would be resold and determined the number of shares each physician would receive. Read more.
