The Stark Law is never easy: Attempts to clarify may fuel confusion

By Mollie Gelburd, JD, associate director, MGMA Government Affairs; and Robert Saner, JD, healthcare attorney, Powers Law Firm, Washington, D.C.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized its massive rulemaking, proposed in 2019, to modernize and clarify the Social Security Act’s Physician Self-Referral Law (“the Stark Law” or “Stark”).i The new rule, published on Dec. 2, 2020, has a number of benefits, including new exceptions for certain value-based payment arrangements and modest relaxation of certain terms that underlie the law’s existing exceptions for compensation relationships between physicians and outside entities to which they refer their patients.