Hospitals & Health Systems
Our Focus
We are keenly aware that our hospital clients, while working to fulfill their core patient care missions, must also cope daily with an ever-changing legal and regulatory environment. Our mission is to provide trusted and seasoned advice and guidance, allowing hospitals to focus on patient care and quality while we handle the legal challenges they face in transactions, regulations, and litigation, among many other issues.
ArentFox Schiff’s Hospitals & Health Systems practice is shaped by a veteran group of nationally recognized attorneys with years of experience in advising hospitals and other health care providers. Unlike many law firms with more narrow health care practices, we have particularly broad and deep experience in operational matters such as medical staff peer review, reimbursement, Medicare certification, accreditation and licensure, and bioethics.
Our Attorneys
Our team is at the forefront of not only regulatory compliance, but also related litigation. At its core, our practice focuses on helping hospitals and health systems in complex regulatory matters, including fraud and abuse and other regulatory and reimbursement issues. We are nationally ranked for our experience counseling clients on such federal laws as the Anti-Kickback Statute; the Stark Law; the False Claims Act, the law requiring overpayments to be returned within 60 days; EMTALA, which regulates hospital emergency departments; HIPAA and HITECH; and those laws’ state counterparts. Attorneys in our hospital practice are leaders in the area of health information privacy and data security with hands-on experience helping clients prepare for, as well as respond to, privacy and cybersecurity breaches.
Full-Service
In our crossover regulatory-litigation practice, we regularly handle False Claims Act cases and related projects such as government investigations, search warrants, and subpoenas. We also represent clients in a wide variety of other health care litigation disputes in state and federal courts, as well as in administrative agency and other proceedings, arbitration panels, and various appellate forums. Our health care litigators have a deep understanding of the medical and pharmaceutical industries and are well-versed in issues such as the complex health care payment system and the overlay of regulations and agency oversight that affect the way medical providers, suppliers, and manufacturers operate. We have recently litigated disputes on behalf of clients encompassing all branches of health care, including matters involving regulatory compliance challenges; managed care disputes; medical staff disputes; coverage and pricing disputes; survey and certification disputes; commercial and governmental reimbursement disputes; and business and employment disputes.
In addition, our attorneys are well-versed in a wide range of health care transactions and also regularly advise our hospital clients on health system strategic initiatives such as integrated delivery models, tax-exempt status, bond financing, resource development and philanthropy, real estate, intellectual property, contracting, clinical research, and labor and employment law, among other areas.
Our attorneys work to create strategic partnerships with hospitals to help set new standards of innovation in the industry. In addition to serving individual health care clients, we contribute our experience and connections to address national policy and regulatory issues through our representation of, and active involvement in, hospital associations and trade groups.
As a strong complement to our services to hospitals and health systems, we also have teams with deep expertise in serving clients in the fields of home health, hospice, and palliative care, life sciences, long term care and senior living, and medical devices, and in nonprofit organization matters generally.
How We Help
- Transactions, including integrated delivery models, tax-exempt status, bond financing, resource development and philanthropy, real estate, intellectual property, contracting, clinical research, and labor and employment law
- Regulatory compliance, including fraud and abuse and other regulatory and reimbursement issues
- Medicare, Medicaid, and state reimbursement program issues
- Anti-Kickback Statute, the Stark Law, the False Claims Act, and related state laws
- Government investigations, search warrants, and subpoenas
- Litigation, including managed care disputes, medical staff disputes, coverage and pricing disputes, survey and certification disputes, commercial and governmental reimbursement disputes, and business and employment disputes
- Medical staff peer review
- Medicare certification, accreditation, and licensure
- Bioethics
- EMTALA
- Health information privacy and data security, including HIPAA and HITECH
- Patient safety organizations, patient safety evaluation systems (PSES), and protecting patient safety work product (PSWP)
