Court holds that certain commission-based payments to employees do not violate EKRA.
Owners of two South Florida addiction treatment facilities convicted of a $112 million scheme involving EKRA violations.
DOJ Sober Homes Initiative leads to arrests of 10 defendants involving EKRA violations.
The Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (EKRA), 18 U.S.C. § 220, has caused confusion since its enactment in 2018. It prohibits the payment of remuneration in return for referring a patient to a recovery home, clinical treatment facility or laboratory. EKRA is based on the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), which applies only to federally funded health insurance programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. EKRA, however, broadly applies to any “health care benefit” program, including commercial insurance.
Shortly after the enactment of EKRA, the Department of Justice (DOJ) created the Sober Homes Initiative in 2020 to focus on fraud schemes in the substance-abuse-treatment industry. Seeking to enforce EKRA, the Sober Homes Initiative focused on bringing criminal charges against medical providers believed to feed patient addictions in order to continue billing for their recovery.
Unlike the AKS upon which EKRA is based, there is little guidance on how to interpret EKRA. That changed, to some extent, when EKRA presented itself in various federal courts at the end of 2021.
A common issue related to the interpretation of EKRA is how it applies to...
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