Health Care

Health Care Transactions

Lathrop GPM’s Health Law team provides the highest levels of expertise, experience and specialization in virtually every type of health care contracting relationship, merger, acquisition and joint venture. Whether it involves negotiating the terms of a physician practice sale to or by a hospital, a long-term professional services or management agreement, adding a hospital to an existing system, adding an additional service or location, forming hospital-physician joint ventures, or enabling providers to collaborate in bringing new services to the community, Lathrop GPM’s Health Law practice provides the skills, leadership and creativity critical to developing strategies that meet the challenges presented by such transactions.

• Affiliations, joint ventures and collaborations
• Antitrust counseling in transactions
• Facility and provider licensing
• Health care financing
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Provider, vendor and managed care contracting
• Technology transfers

Health Care Regulatory Counseling

Health care providers in the United States offer their services and conduct their businesses in an environment of ever-changing and highly technical laws and regulations, state and federal oversight, and political and public scrutiny. Lathrop GPM’s Health Law team understands that when it comes to compliance, the rules are complex and the stakes are high. We routinely help our clients develop compliance plans and guide them through responding to and defending against federal and state regulatory inquiries.

• Advising diagnostic imaging centers, clinical labs, DMEPOS, HHAs and other ancillary providers
• Antitrust law
• Facility and provider licensing
• False Claims Act
• Federal and state fraud and abuse laws
• Government investigations and self-disclosure
• HIPAA and state privacy, security and breach matters
• Medical staff issues
• Medicare and Medicaid billing and reimbursement issues
• Medicare and Medicaid enrollment, participation and program integrity matters
• Patient rights, including vulnerable adult and child protection laws
• Provider, vendor, and managed care contracting
• Stark Law and Anti-kickback Statute compliance
• State fee splitting and corporate practice of medicine
• Tax and tax exemption law

Academic Medicine

The Lathrop GPM Health Law team is one of the most experienced groups of attorneys working with academic medical centers, as well as their related professional schools (including medical schools, dental schools, nursing schools and schools of pharmacy). Lathrop GPM’s extensive Employment & Labor practice group lends us additional knowledge to address the complex, intersecting issues faced by academic medical centers.

• Advising on intellectual property policies and practices
• Advising on reimbursement and billing in physician teaching settings and other complex areas, such as transplant services, clinical labs and in joint ventures with community providers
• Clinical research contracting, compliance and reporting issues
• Issues related to graduate medical education funding
• Negotiating and drafting contracts between AMC components and other health systems
• Negotiating and drafting contractual arrangements involving AMC physicians
• Negotiating and drafting electronic health record arrangements to facilitate clinical care, education and research
• Negotiating technology transfer agreements and arrangements
• Obtaining favorable OIG advisory opinions for AMC clients
• Patent prosecutions for AMC technology, including biologics
• Structuring relationships between components of AMCs

Health Care Litigation

Our health care litigation attorneys provide our clients in the health care field with knowledgeable, practical representation. The litigators on the health care team represent health plans, hospitals, clinics, physician groups, individual health care professionals and other providers in litigation, before state licensing boards and administrative bodies, and in responding to civil and criminal investigations.

• Government and internal investigations
• False Claims Act
• Federal and state fraud and abuse laws
• Licensing and credentialing disputes
• Matters before state licensing boards
• Medicare enrollment, billing, reimbursement, and participation disputes
• Patient rights, including vulnerable adult and child protection laws
• Qui tam and whistleblower defense

Long-term Care & Senior Housing 

Lathrop GPM’s health law team includes deep long-term care industry expertise. Our team of attorneys serves as primary counsel for many regional long-term care providers, and has extensive real estate development and financing experience.

• Advising on corporate governance and structure issues such as creation of parent holding company structures or consolidation of multi-entity systems
• Assisting in contracting and relationships with providers in compliance with fraud and abuse and self-referral prohibitions
• Advising on investigations involving personal injury and security issues
• Advising our Minnesota assisted living clients on their transition to the new licensure standards for such facilities, including new resident contracts, changes of ownership and survey issues
• Advising on investigations involving personal injury and security issues
• Assisting long-term care and senior housing organization clients in multiple acquisition transactions each year, involving bond financing, purchase of facilities, licensing, employment and employee benefit, Medicare and Medicaid enrollment, real estate and tax-exemption issues. We handle all aspects of the transaction and work alongside bond counsel, as well as the client’s operational staff, to ensure a smooth transition to new ownership and continuity in payor relationships
• Assisting with licensing and accreditation of their facilities
• Board training on governance issues such as fiduciary duties, conflicts of interest and inclusive decision-making
• Preparing policies, forms, and training materials to satisfy the federal and state HIPAA privacy requirements
• Responding to questions and issues in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement
• Serving programs for people with disabilities and mental health needs, including waivered group homes, ICF/MRs, day training and habilitation, extended employment and community-directed community supports, as well as community mental health programs, ARMS and IRTS programs; our work for these clients includes licensing, county contracting, interpretation of payor requirements and managing client situations for clients under public or private guardianship
• Working with a number of long-term care and senior housing organizations on a variety of day-to-day operational matters, including ADA and FHA compliance, business and resident contracts, state regulatory issues, risk management and business operations