The anti-kickback statute makes it a criminal offense to knowingly and willingly offer, pay, solicit, or receive any remuneration to induce referrals of items or services reimbursable by any Federal health care program. Thereafter, each of the 19 target areas will be measured alone in determining any cost savings. These payments to the Surgeon Group will constitute the only hospital payments to the physicians in question for the provision of Medicare-funded surgical services. Analyzing the proposed agreement from the perspective of the government, the OIG advisory opinion stated that ''like any compensation arrangement between a hospital and a physician who admits or refers patients to such hospital, we are concerned that the proposed arrangement could be used to disguise remuneration from the hospital to reward or induce referrals by the Surgeon Group. Despite this, the IG concluded his report by stating that ''notwithstanding the foregoing, we reiterate our concerns regarding many arrangements between hospitals and physicians to share cost savings.
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On a scale of 0 to 10, with ten being the highest, the RTIalert reading describes current RTI levels and predicts near-term peak levels. The system is based on information gleaned from approximately 30,000 physicians across the country and is updated each week. Unlike annual health data banks, RTIalert's data collection and processing is dynamic, allowing consumers to respond to changing conditions. RTIalert was developed by Surveillance Data, Inc., a medical data collection firm. Other issues addressed will be the treatment of obesity, the importance of systolic blood pressure, women and heart disease, the implications of genetic research on CVD treatment, and peripheral artery disease management.