The New Jersey state Senate this week approved revisions to an existing physician self-referral law that would impose new regulations on the state’s rapidly growing ambulatory surgery center industry.
According to the Bergen County Record, the bill would require:
physicians to inform patients in writing of any financial interests they have in referred ASCs;
surgery centers to inform patients when they’ll be billed at out-of-network rates;
facilities with one OR to register with the state Department of Health and Senior Services and obtain Medicare certification or accreditation from a CMS-recognized body; and
licensed facilities to be accredited by a CMS-recognized accrediting body.
The law exempts physician-hospital joint ventures and retroactively protects ASCs that violated the state’s self-referral rules in the past. Mark E. Manigan, a partner in WolfBlock’s Health Law Practice Group, explained in an e-mail that the revised bill would also prohibit the state’s Department of Health from "issuing any new ASC licenses unless one of the following scenarios apply:
a change of ownership;
the relocation of an ASC within 20 miles (provided there was no expansion in the ASC’s scope of services);
entities that have filed architectural plans within six months (reduced from nine months) of the effective date;
entities that are owned in whole or in part by a New Jersey hospital; or
entities that are owned in whole by a medical school."
The legislation is sponsored by state Senate President Richard Codey, author of New Jersey’s existing Healthcare Practitioner Self-referral Law, which bars doctors from referring patients to their own ASCs unless they disclose that relationship. Critics charge that the state’s approximately 300 freestanding surgery centers have endangered hospitals and increased the cost of care for patients and insurers.
The proposed revisions now move to the state Assembly, which is expected to vote on the measure in January.
—Irene Tsikitas
