Long-Term Care and Senior Housing
Experienced legal advisors to long-term care providers
Capabilities at a glance
- A dedicated team of attorneys providing solutions to the everyday problems facing long-term care and senior housing providers, including regulatory compliance, resident and staff issues and transactional representation.
- Experienced in defending health care companies and individuals before state and federal regulatory agencies.
- Extensive experience representing both lenders and borrowers in taxable and tax-exempt financing transactions for long-term care and senior housing providers across the country.
- Long-standing sector experience, having represented long-term care providers for decades.
- We represent a broad array of provider types, including Medicare/Medicaid-certified skilled nursing facilities (SNF), home health and hospice providers, assisted and independent living facilities, continuing care retirement communities (CCRC), long-term care and specialty pharmacies, and home infusion providers.
Supporting your vital work through regulatory compliance and proactive representation
Our attorneys help providers navigate regulatory issues such as state licensure and federal certification actions. We work with our clients to ensure fraud and abuse compliance, which often involves responding to audits, subpoenas and search warrants as well as providing necessary self-disclosures to the government. We regularly analyze business models to ensure compliance with the Stark Law, Anti-Kickback Statute, the False Claims Act and related regulatory compliance laws.
Both proactively and reactively, our attorneys assist long-term care providers with a host of issues involving residents and families, including resident discharge, complaints and reporting requirements. We frequently partner with our Labor & Employment colleagues to address staff training and employee benefits issues. When necessary, our litigators defend SNFs against allegations of negligence. We are adept at confronting crisis situations, conducting incident investigations, preparing and implementing effective responses, and representing our clients’ interests in administrative proceedings and in court.
Commitment to the long-term care and senior housing sector, its growth and its future
In addition to serving as general health care regulatory counsel to our clients, our team plays a key role in helping make business deals happen involving long-term care providers. We routinely represent clients in buying or selling long-term care facilities, including handling all regulatory compliance aspects. When a deal hinges on gaining critical financing, our attorneys perform important regulatory compliance due diligence, write licensing opinion letters, review and negotiate contracts, and help our clients through the entire process. Frequently, our team leverages the experience of attorneys in our real estate, real estate financing and business practices to ensure each transaction goes smoothly from start to finish.
Experience
- Regulatory compliance counsel
- Transactional counsel
- State licensure and certification issues, including navigating changes of ownership (CHOW) and changes of information
- Medicare and Medicaid conditions of participation and reimbursement issues
- Fraud, waste and abuse investigations and analysis of arrangements for Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark Law compliance
- Establishment of compliance programs and plans
- State privacy and security advice
- Physician employment and independent contractor agreements
- Litigation, arbitration, mediation, incident response and crisis management
- Development, formation, acquisition, expansion, financing, sales, mergers and joint ventures of long-term care and senior housing providers
- Assistance with the survey process and preparation of plans of correction from both the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and state agencies
- Facility policies and procedures, including drafting and reviewing
- Borrower’s counsel, bond counsel, lender’s counsel and underwriter’s counsel in taxable and tax-exempt finance transactions
Successes
- Obtained a state court injunction on behalf of a SNF, mandating a special Medicaid rate designed to reimburse the client for the care of SNF residents diagnosed with severe or profound intellectual disabilities.
- Provided ongoing regulatory counsel to a national assisted living client related to both federal and state guidance throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Helped a national assisted living client navigate CARES Act funding through the initial application, reporting and auditing process.
