The health care law practice encompasses the wide range of legal services that are provided to the rapidly changing and highly regulated health care industry. These services include:
- Transactions such as mergers and acquisitions of hospitals and health care companies; forming and implementing accountable care organizations; designing and negotiating physician-hospital alignment arrangements; and joint ventures and partnerships among health care providers and with health plans.
- Financing and restructurings, including capital access, venture capital/private equity investments and partnerships, and bankruptcies.
- Defending and managing mission-critical audits and investigations of potential False Claims Act, Anti-Kickback, Stark Law or other fraud and abuse violations; advising on self-disclosures; and negotiation of settlements and corporate integrity agreements (CIAs) with government agencies.
- Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, including general counseling, appeals, and updates on new developments.
- Advising on complex compliance issues and on compliance plans and procedures.
- Managed care contracting, litigation, and design of new reimbursement and risk-sharing models.
- Health information technology, such as contracting for electronic health records, cloud computing, software licensing, hardware acquisitions, and IT services and outsourcing.
- Privacy and security compliance, including counseling clients on HIPAA and HITECH Red Flag rules; designing compliance policies and procedures; internal compliance audits; responding to OCR investigations; monetizing health data; and managing and reporting data breaches.
- Corporate, regulatory, and strategic counseling issues, such as corporate structure, new business models, governance, licensure, certification and accreditation, and medical staff structures.
- Health care business negotiations and dispute resolution.
The client base in the health law practice is diverse and wide-ranging:
- Institutional health care providers, such as academic and community hospitals and health systems.
- Senior living and post-acute care facilities, including skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, community care retirement facilities, and home care and hospice facilities.
- Large physician groups, ambulatory surgery center and hospital developers, and ancillary service providers.
- Venture capital and private equity groups with health care funds and portfolio companies.
- Physician practice and health service management companies.
- Health care facility developers.
- Health insurers, reinsurers, and employer-sponsored health plans.
- Health information technology companies.
- Pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers.
- Medical transportation companies.
- National provider and trade associations.
Lawrence W. Vernaglia, Partner