On Friday, April 8, Peter Pavarini and I co-presented a webinar overviewing the ACO regulations from a legal perspective. We were part of a three-firm “task force” that came together to analyze the rules and provide guidance to our clients and friends. In addition to Squire Sanders, Paul Lee and others from Strategic Health Care and Tony Colorosi from Plante Moran participated in the webinar. You can download the powerpoint slides that we used in the webinar here: ACO Webinar Slides.
We have heard much appreciative feedback from clients and friends regarding the webinar. We had a wonderful turnout: over 350 separate computers were plugged in looking at the powerpoint as we presented. We believe that it is likely that over 500 people listened in all told.
Peter focused his remarks on corporate governance issues, the Stark Law, the Anti-Kickback Statute and Civil Monetary Penalties, and took everyone through an examination of a well written question to CMS asking for guidance on a Primary Care participation issue. I took everyone through the major antitrust considerations and posed a sample/proposed question that highlights the question of how the waiver authority may or may not extend protection to relationships that seem to clearly have cost efficiency and quality enhancing benefits, particularly regarding the formation of patient centered medical homes. It is clear that the current state of the rules and the background analysis from CMS, OIG, IRS, FTC and DoJ leave many gaps at the present time and there is room for an active comment period.
Let us know how we did! Our group is considering a wide variety of follow up efforts including client alerts, blogging (of course) and a follow up webinar on strategy considerations relevant to provider organizations relating to ACOs–a deeper and more specific dive into the analytical considerations that we all need to consider.
