How to Avoid Non-Compliance with Physician Agreements

Recently we learned that a hospital system based in Cincinnati had agreed to pay the federal government $14.25 million to resolve allegations the system violated the False Claims Act, according to the Department of Justice. The settlement revolved around allegations that the health system provided compensation to six referring physicians—an oncologist and five internal medicine physicians—that exceeded fair market value of their services. The health system disclosed these issues to the DOJ.

According to Acting Assistant Attorney Chad A Readler, head of the DOJ’s Civil Division, ” When physicians are rewarded financially for referring patients to hospitals or other healthcare providers, it can affect their medical judgment, resulting in over utilization of services and higher health care costs. In addition to yielding a recovery for taxpayers, this settlement should deter similar conduct in the future and help make health care more affordable.”

How to avoid non-compliance 

This could have been easily avoided. For the cost of a double vanilla espresso latte with whip per physician each month, the health system could have saved more than $14.25 million.

If the health system had only used a physician timekeeping app that reduced compliance risk by:

• Digitally tracking and recording time spent on activities specifically within the physician agreement.
• Automatically tracking hours logged and remaining for the month, thereby preventing over billing.
• Ensuring only complete and compliant logs with an e-Signature are submitted for payment.
• Eliminating unsupported or undocumented or duplicate physician logs.
• Making sure physicians do not exceed established fair market value for services performed.
• Automatically reminding physicians to submit and hospital staff to review and approve logs.
• Offering the physician’s a timekeeping app conveniently available on any mobile device.
• Providing end-to-end transparency with a complete digital audit trail.

Dynafios offers TRACE physician timekeeping and contract compliance app to help health systems ensure federal regulatory and contract compliance. TRACE helps navigate health systems and physicians through the complex labyrinth of compliance. And, TRACE costs less than a double vanilla espresso latte with whip per physician each month!

Find out how your hospital can avoid non-compliance with Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statutes with Dynafios TRACE physician time tracking app. Call 877.858.3282 (DATA) or email info@dynafios.com for more information.