Provider and Physician Groups
Counsel that delivers value and results to clinics and medical practices
Capabilities at a glance
- Attorneys with decades of experience representing health care clients, including independent clinics and networks of physician and non-physician practitioners.
- A nationally recognized health care practice with significant resources and a deep bench.
- A one-stop shop for individual practitioners and group practices, covering the gamut of legal issues, such as health care regulatory law, labor and employment, intellectual property, real estate, tax law, tax exemption, immigration and insurance regulation.
- Excellent connections with state and federal regulators, including licensing boards and regulatory agencies.
Shared purpose with clients on health law
While we have a significant practice representing hospitals and health care systems, we also have deep experience representing individual providers and group practices. We understand the full gamut of laws that confront medical practitioners, and we are familiar with the legal landscape as well as the business side of things. This allows us to offer clear practical and strategic advice that fits squarely within the parameters of applicable law. We have helped our provider clients negotiate the quickly changing health care landscape and the constant new regulations emerging from both state and federal lawmakers. For many of our health care provider clients, we serve in a role similar to in-house counsel. We help our clients navigate the laws that govern arrangements between hospitals and physicians and other aspects of physician practice, and we have the tools and experience to keep our clients compliant on the front end.
Experience-led advice for health care providers and physician groups
Few law firms of any size have the varied experience, resources and in-depth legal and health care knowledge found at Quarles. Many of our attorneys have health care industry experience as well as technical legal skills in the area. Our clients often seek advice in the following areas:
- Medical practice formation, sale, dissolution and management
- Accomplishing licensure and managing licensing board investigations and concerns
- Scope of practice, collaboration and supervision of non-physician practitioners
- Patient care-related legal and strategic issues
- Patient informed consent
- Medical staff membership and structure with regard to hospital affiliations
- Contracting within legal parameters
- Employment law
- Regulatory compliance
- Health care information and technology
- Privacy and data breach
- Health care reimbursement
- Intellectual property (IP)
- Medical staff and peer review
- Health care transactions
- Pharmacy and DEA
- Litigation
- Government variances
- Internal audits
- Provider Reimbursement Review Board (PRRB)
Experience
- Representing practitioners in becoming licensed or negotiating licensing board actions.
- Negotiating vendor contracts such as electronic medical records and practice management.
- Assisting with mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
- Providing counsel on collaboration and supervision requirements for non-physician practitioners and drafting required agreements.
- Assisting with hospital medical staff issues.
- Service contracting with other health care facilities.
- Analyzing contemplated arrangements to ensure compliance with health care regulations, including the Stark law, the Anti-Kickback Statute and the False Claims Act.
- Assisting with governmental inquiries, investigations and lawsuits.
- Assisting with disruptive or noncompliant patient relationships.
- Reviewing and drafting compliance plans and policies.
- Assisting with billing systems and audits to ensure compliance.
- Representing providers in disputes relating to reimbursement, including with the PRRB.
Successes
- We assisted a physician assistant who was the subject of multiple reports by an angry ex-patient in successfully getting all such reports dismissed and deterring the patient from filing future unwarranted complaints.
- We negotiated a complicated affiliation agreement for a sports medicine physician with a hospital that took into account his value to the community, in addition to straight production.
