Health Law Advisor

It has been four years since Congress enacted the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (“EKRA”), codified at 18 U.S.C. § 220. EKRA initially targeted patient brokering and kickback schemes within the addiction treatment and recovery spaces. However, since EKRA was expansively drafted to also apply to clinical laboratories (it applies to improper referrals for any “service”, regardless of the payor), public as well as private insurance plans and even self-pay patients fall within the reach of the statute.

On July 8, 2019, Anthony Camillo, owner of Allegiance Medical Laboratory and AMS Medical Laboratory, was sentenced to 30 months in prison by a federal judge in the Eastern District of Missouri. He was ordered to pay $3.4 million in restitution for violations of the anti-kickback statute, associated conspiracy charges, and illegal kickbacks related to various health care fraud schemes to defraud federal health care benefit programs. Those operating in the clinical laboratory testing space or referring specimens to such laboratories should know that what happened in this case is ...

Clinical laboratories need to review how they compensate sales personnel following the passage of the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018 (“EKRA”) (Section 8122 of the SUPPORT Act) which is effective as of October 24, 2018.  The SUPPORT Act is a combination of more than 70 bills aimed at fighting the opioid epidemic, with EKRA intended to address patient brokering in exchange for kickbacks of individuals with substance abuse disorders.  However, as written, EKRA is far more expansive.

EKRA adds an all payor (public and private) anti-kickback rule to the health care fraud ...