Health Care

Just as patients select physicians for their expertise in a particular specialty, so too should health care providers select their attorneys based upon their expertise in handling the inordinately complex issues that affect the medical profession. Some of the region’s most prominent hospitals, nursing homes, HMOs, physician practice groups, and individual providers rely upon our health care lawyers’ years of experience handling the variety of special issues that uniquely affect the health care industry.

We counsel health care providers on forming, merging and acquiring practice groups, selling their practices, labor and employment matters, tax laws, and complying with federal and state statutory and regulatory requirements, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) — all of which have unique rules that apply to the health care industry and require attorneys with knowledge of the industry to handle them.

We frequently provide in-house client training on a wide variety of issues. We are a leading defender of hospitals and physicians in medical malpractice lawsuits, and we use that same litigation experience to represent health care professionals in professional disciplinary matters. We have also successfully represented health care providers in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement litigation.

Other recent accomplishments include:

• Counseling a medical clinic through the investigation, response and reporting of a privacy breach.
• Counseling physician practices through numerous mergers and acquisitions.
• Successfully representing several major hospitals in significant medical malpractice litigation.
• Counseling a major Central New York physician’s practice group through a complete restructuring of its ownership and management organization.
• Successfully defending health care providers in wrongful discharge and other related employment litigation.
• Negotiating physician recruitment arrangements and other physician-hospital contracts.
• Advising health care clients regarding the Affordable Care Act and how to take advantage of new opportunities presented by health care reform.