Stark law violations often surface through claims data, whistleblowers and audit trails, sometimes years after the arrangement in question was put in place. Here are four things physicians need to know: 1. Strict liability means intent doesn’t matter. The Stark…
ASC Coding, Billing & Collections
A Fort Worth, Texas cardiologist has been charged in an $89 million healthcare fraud scheme involving medically unnecessary cardiovascular screening tests on college student athletes, including one who died of sudden cardiac arrest approximately 24 days after the physician allegedly…
When Mike Verdon, MD, a neurosurgeon in Dayton, Ohio, first heard about the Ambulatory Specialty Model, his reaction was alarm — not for himself, but for the colleagues he looked up on the CMS participant list. “I looked, I’m not…
Total clinical compensation rose 4.3% in 2025, but about half of that growth is being funded by providers doing more work, not by gains in reimbursement, according to the AMGA 2026 Medical Group Compensation and Productivity Survey shared with Becker’s. …
A Tennessee clinic owner and physician has been charged with prescribing more than 5.6 million pills and doses of controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose over more than eight years, the Justice Department said in a June 23 news…
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The decision to leave hospital employment for independent practice is not just a financial calculation; for many physicians, it is a geographic one. Ahmed Hasan, MD, president of Lehigh (Pa.) Gastroenterology Associates, knows physicians who recently went independent and are…
The Justice Department has announced its 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, charging 455 defendants, including 90 physicians and other licensed medical professionals, in schemes involving more than $6.5 billion in false claims, the department said in a June 23…
The headline number in most physician compensation reports is total cash compensation, which is base salary plus bonuses plus profit-sharing, but that figure doesn’t show how much depends on productivity metrics, patient satisfaction scores or quality measures outside their control. …
The federal agency that oversees Medicare is moving to place ASCs inside the same episode-based payment framework that has governed hospital joint replacement care since 2016, and ASC operators have roughly 18 months to figure out what that means for…
Noncompete agreements, certificate-of-need laws and tax incentives are some of the most powerful policy levers shaping the way that independent physicians practice. Marcelo Hochman, MD, a Charleston-based independent physician and former president of the Independent Doctors of South Carolina, has…