Increasing federal involvement in health care funding has been accompanied by increasingly Byzantine federal laws and regulations applicable to health care providers. The current system of Medicare, Medicaid and Tax laws applicable to hospitals and physicians presents a huge trap to the unwary. A health care provider could find itself facing enormous civil fines and federal criminal felony charges for seemingly innocent business practices that would be unremarkable in any other arena. Furthermore, the Officer of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for enforcing Medicare and Medicaid laws and regulations, along with Department of Justice, have become very aggressive in recent years in prosecuting what they consider to be improper activities of health care providers.

In today's climate, the best defense to a federal prosecution for a healthcare provider is to go on the offense and identify and prevent potential violations before the happen. As such, the attorneys at Bolen Robinson & Ellis have devoted a significant part of their practice into developing expertise in the various federal laws applicable to health care providers, such as the Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback statute, and the laws applicable to hospital-physician joint ventures, and Internal Revenue laws applicable to tax exemption for non-profit hospitals. Bolen Robinson & Ellis has experience in conducting institutional, comprehensive audits of a hospital's entire operation to identify and rectify potential violations of federal laws so the problems can be fixed before the federal government starts an investigation. In addition to avoiding potential violations of federal law, hospitals which conduct such comprehensive internal audits are generally treated more leniently by the government when problems do arise.