A cardiology group in New York has agreed to pay the U.S. government $1.3 million to settle charges that it compensated physicians based on how many patients they referred for medical imaging scans.
Cardiovascular Specialists, doing business as New York Heart Center (NYHC), agreed to pay the fine to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act and the Stark law that prohibits physicians from referring patients to facilities in which they have a financial interest.
Investigators from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York charged that in 2007 and 2008 NYHC used a compensation plan for its partner physicians that was based in part on the volume or value of each physician's referrals for nuclear medicine and CT scans.
This violated the False Claims Act and the Stark law, the government claimed, as the laws "do not permit practices to compensate physicians in a manner that directly takes into account the volume or value of the physician's referrals for services that are not personally performed by the ordering physician."
Media coverage of the settlement has pointed out that it's one of the first Stark enforcement cases involving physician compensation inside a practice, without referrals to a hospital involved.
