> This is literally illegal! Physicians cannot refer patients to entities they own or have an interest in.

There has to be a done of exceptions to this.

You see a cardiologist and they recommend a stent. They aren’t going to recommend a different cardiologist does it.

You see a doctor, and they refer you for a test. They have a share portfolio that contains shares in the facility they referred to.

Medicine is riddled with potential conflicts of interest. Managing them is what professionals are supposed to do and what regulators are supposed to enforce.

I don’t live in the US, I’m a n Mew Zealand. Sadly, I am aware of behaviour that looks like corruption in our system.

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bonsai_spool 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> You see a cardiologist and they recommend a stent. They aren’t going to recommend a different cardiologist does it.

Things must be different in NZ.

First, it's true that you're going to want to go to who your doctor knows/recommends. The law in the US is just that they can't refer you to a group they own/their spouse owns, or for which they get a financial benefit.

Next, you're speaking about the doctor doing a consult visit before doing a procedure. That is not the same thing as ordering a treatment for you to go get the treatment elsewhere—which describes what happens you go to the pharmacist to get drugs.

Finally, the cardiologist you see in the office is almost certainly not doing stents for you as those are very distinct skillsets (in the US).

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dogmatism 6 hours ago | parent [-]

>Finally, the cardiologist you see in the office is almost certainly not doing stents for you as those are very distinct skillsets (in the US).

Umm, what? No. It's exceedingly rare for an interventional cardiologist in the US not to do office work. The average number of PCI/yr is like 50 or something. Plus if one spent all one's time in the cath lab, they'd have a spinal fusion, knee replacement, thyroid cancer, and cataracts.

But what you are trying to get at is that there is law about self-referral ("Stark law") but in reality there are exceptions that render it fairly useless

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bonsai_spool 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> But what you are trying to get at is that there is law about self-referral ("Stark law") but in reality there are exceptions that render it fairly useless

What are the exceptions that render it useless? I have never heard of them in my 10+ years of hearing about it.

I did not know that I-cards do office work, not my area of medicine.

IR is in the angio lab daily without cataracts, thyroid cancer, etc., so that part of your statement is clearly not true.

I also don't understand what you mean about knee replacements... humans are generally capable of standing without requiring surgical intervention.

	▲	lostlogin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> What are the exceptions that render it useless? I have never heard of them in my 10+ years of hearing about it. It sounds so unlikely that there is a blanket rule that you can’t refer to something you have a shareholding in. If you own a shareholding in a hospital you work at, you can’t refer internally for a test? I just don’t believe that. Edit: I did some hunting. ‘Per click’ payments or bonus payments based on volume are illegal. Rents must be fair market etc. It looks like owning a chunk of the place you refer to is fine. https://www.healthcarecompliancepros.com/stark-law-explained...