Traditionally, the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“OIG”) would take a hard stance on any arrangements that might involve some form of remuneration from a hospital to a referring physician, but the winds of change may be blowing. In Advisory Opinion 22-20, published in December of 2022, the OIG has given a green light, albeit in a limited context, to an arrangement in which a hospital may have its employee nurse practitioners perform some services traditionally performed by the patients’ primary care physicians. This is a small step in the direction of a more flexible OIG stance on the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (“AKS”), but it doesn’t completely sidestep risks.

There has been a surge of nursing lawsuits in recent years, with nurses arguing they have been denied overtime pay, meal breaks, and fair wages as guaranteed to them by the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). The FLSA makes a distinction between exempt and non-exempt employees, with the latter receiving overtime and wage protection.