Health Law
About
Today’s health care industry is one of the most heavily-regulated industries in the United States. Our health care lawyers provide a wide range of legal services to physician groups, hospitals, suppliers, and other healthcare professionals. Our health law team is adept at navigating the myriad issues that confront health care businesses and entities. Those issues include entity formations & acquisitions, regulatory compliance, tax planning & benefits, employment law, and litigation.
Health Law
Formations & Acquisitions
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Our health law team assists health care providers, suppliers, and other businesses with respect to their formation, on-going operational matters, restructuring, mergers & acquisitions, and dissolutions. In that capacity, our health law lawyers regularly:
- Form and maintain professional corporations, partnerships, LLCs, LLPs, and IPAs
- Prepare shareholder “buy-sell” and operating agreements
- Negotiate and draft physician employment and independent contractor agreements
- Coordinate mergers of medical groups and practices
- Negotiate and draft medical office leases
- Prepare buy-in and buy-out agreements
- Prepare management services and billing agreements
- Advise on and negotiate practice withdrawal
- Dissolve corporations and partnerships
Regulatory Compliance
Our health law team represents health care providers, suppliers, and other businesses in understanding and complying with healthcare regulations. In that capacity, our health law lawyers regularly:
- Advise clients on Stark laws and state anti-kickback and self-referral laws
- Perform compliance audits and develop compliance plans
- Defend governmental and private payor audits and overpayment allegations
- Advise clients on HIPAA compliance and breach issues
Tax Planning & Benefits
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Our health law team assists health care providers, suppliers, and other businesses with complex tax and benefit issues. In that capacity, our health law lawyers regularly:
- Analyze and advise on tax issues in practice buy-ins, buy-outs, and mergers
- Perform S-election analysis and implementation
- Design and prepare qualified retirement plans, including 401(k), 403(b), and cash balance plans
- Design and prepare non-qualified deferred compensation plans, including SERPs, 457(b), and 457(f) plans
- Perform controlled group and affiliated service group analysis
- Perform estate planning for individuals and families
- Analyze tax issues affecting non-profit medical entities, including UBIT, private benefit issues, and private inurement issues
Employment Law
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Our health law team assists providers, medical groups, hospitals and others with employment law compliance, investigations, and development of legal employment policies and agreements. For example, our employment team:
- Reviews and drafts personnel policies and employee handbooks and personnel manuals for medical groups and hospitals to ensure compliance with applicable state and federal law
- Drafts employment agreements, arbitration agreements, restrictive covenants, codes of conduct and similar agreements for medical groups and providers
- Advises on wage and hour, disability, harassment, employment discrimination, retaliation, leave of absence and other employment compliance matters
- Assists medical groups and hospitals in investigating misconduct, terminating problem employees, and drafting severance agreements
- Investigates and advises employers on romantic relationship, sexual harassment, and similar matters involving providers and staff
- Represents medical groups, hospitals and practitioners in defending employment lawsuits, administrative investigations, and BOLI and EEOC complaints
- Assists employers in audits by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the State of Oregon Employment Department
Litigation
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The litigators in our health law team assist providers, medical groups, hospitals and others with advice and representation in state and federal court and in arbitration proceedings. For example, our litigation team has:
- Represented a medical group against a nationwide health plan in a dispute over contract renewals, rates and coverage
- Assisted medical groups and practitioners in enforcing or opposing restrictive covenants on competition and solicitation of patients
- Represented medical practices in investigating and defending disability discrimination claims brought by discharged providers
- Litigated matters involving the alleged breach of physician employment agreements
- Advised medical groups in subpoena compliance and testimony
- Assisted medical groups in mitigating HIPAA breaches and handling patient notification responsibilities
- Litigated claims for theft of patient lists and other confidential business information