Hospitals and Health Systems
Deep experience with all hospital and health institution legal issues
Capabilities at a glance
- Broad legal offering, including health care law, labor and employment, intellectual property (IP), real estate, tax-exempt organizations, immigration and insurance regulation.
- Long-standing sector experience, representing hospitals and health care systems for decades.
- Well connected to state and federal agencies, to obtain real-time feedback on compliance issues, support facility and related applications, and resolve regulatory concerns and investigations efficiently.
- Advice from a dynamic, collaborative firm, bringing in corporate and tax lawyers to advise our hospital clients on corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and development of clinics and other facilities.
Comprehensive legal support for your hospital or health system
We understand that hospitals and health care institutions never rest and that potential legal issues arise constantly. We are extremely responsive for immediate management of difficult issues or for handling potential regulatory noncompliance. We are well versed in the vast network of state and federal regulations governing hospitals and health systems. We also know the unique needs of the health care industry and can pair strategic and practical counsel with our legal advice.
Proven excellence across the full spectrum of hospital and health law
Over decades, our Hospitals and Health Systems team has been assisting clients with all the issues associated with running hospitals and other health care institutions, from the routine to the complex. Few of our peers of any size match our varied experience and resources.
Some of the major aspects of our health law work include:
- Fraud and abuse compliance, investigations and resolutions, including the Stark Law, the Anti-Kickback Statute and the False Claims Act. We are experienced in internal compliance investigations, enforcement actions by the government and whistleblower suits, as well as voluntary reporting and repayments to the government.
- Medicare Conditions of Participation and Payment
- Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA)
- Affordable Care Act (ACA)
- Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA)
- National Practitioner Databank reporting and compliance
- Health information technology, state and federal confidentiality law (including HIPAA and the information blocking law), data management and breach avoidance and resolution
- Rural health care issues, including regulation of critical access hospitals, rural health clinics and federally qualified health centers
- Medical staff bylaws and structure, corrective action and peer review
- Licensure, accreditation, survey and certification
- Pharmacy and DEA
- Patient care, bioethical issues and risk management
- FDA
- Health care finance and reimbursement, including Medicare, Medicaid and commercial payor arrangements and clinical networks
- Provider-based billing and strategy
- Intellectual property
- Health care transactions
- Litigation
- Labor and employment
- Employee benefits
- Immigration
Experience
- Establishing compliance programs and plans.
- Assisting with internal audits and plans of correction.
- Assisting with surveys by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and The Joint Commission.
- Establishing provider-based hospital departments and rural health clinics.
- Structuring compensation and benefits for practitioners and physicians.
- Managing the integration and scope of practice issues of non-physicians, including integration of medical staff.
- Medical staff hearings (representing the medical executive committee or serving as hearing officer).
- EMTALA compliance policies and procedures, and management of difficult or combative patients.
- Patient informed consent (advice and documentation).
- Electronic medical record advice, including access issues and retention issues.
- Strategizing for new hospitals or hospital expansion given regulatory and geographic and reimbursement limitations.
- Working with revenue cycle issues from a legal compliance standpoint.
- Bond and borrower counsel issues and strategy for legally compliant building projects.
- Managing corrective action and peer-review processes as well as related information disclosure and reporting obligations.
- Assisting with implementation of caregiver misconduct programming.
- Advising on health care finance and corporate restructuring, mergers and joint ventures.
- Drafting and reviewing hospital policies (compliance, patient care, ethics, reporting and more).
- Drafting, reviewing and revising hospital contracts to ensure health care regulatory compliance.
- Assistance managing security breaches.
- Implementing HIPAA privacy and security programs.
- Structuring medical staff bylaws and related documents.
- Advice on licensing and accreditation processes for hospitals with state agencies, Medicare, Medicaid and The Joint Commission.
- Managing patient care and safety, as well as consent and refusal issues, end-of-life care, drug use or other crimes on hospital premises.
Successes
- Our Hospitals and Health Systems team is working with a client to establish a number of new hospitals, including provider-based remote locations of various existing hospitals. We are providing full regulatory compliance representation to allow the hospitals to begin treating patients on an expedited schedule with a fully credentialed medical staff on the scheduled open dates.
- A multidisciplinary team has been working extensively on a fast-tracked affiliation project to create a merger of equals between two health systems. We are assisting with due diligence, core contracts and policies, the licensing and certification process, and key integration activities.
