Question

Choose either EMTALA, Anti-Kickback, or the STARK Law. Discuss why following these laws are necessary and the challenges health care professionals face in upholding these laws. Provide an example of an organization that violated one of these laws and the consequences they faced.

Answer 1

Stark Act or stark Law was passed with the primary objective of putting a check on any kind of frauds or leaks in healthcare industry. The Stark Law primarily prevents doctors and physicians from referring patients to healthcare providers and testers or healthcare services, with whom they may have any kind of financial linkage or relationship. Physicians and doctors may try to gain personal interests by referring the patients to institutions where they may get a commission. This will put the primary interest of patient treatment at the backend. The overall credibility and validity of treatment and diagnosis test of patient may become suspicious in such a scenario. Stark Act works with the objective to prevent this tendency.

The challenges which healthcare professionals may face in upholding these watchdog laws like Stark law, are as follows:

· The adherence and implementation to Stark law is quite difficult to monitor

· Finding relationship between healthcare institutions and physicians may be difficult to detect

· The trust factor between patients and healthcare institution gets affected

An example of an organization which violated Stark Law is Hospital Corporation of America. Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) is a chain of hospitals across USA. The hospital used to lease property to physicians at an amount, less than the average market value which the intention that such physicians will refer their patients to the services of the hospital. This violation was caught in the year 2012. HCA had to pay heavy punitive measures for this violation. Its overall brand image had also got affected because of this case.