Hospitals, Article 28 and IDTFs

Today, hospitals and Article 28 facilities are playing an increasingly more prominent role in the process of health care delivery.  Recent federal and state legislative initiatives have accelerated the shift in the delivery model from small private practices to large, integrated networks, major hospitals, diagnostic and treatment centers and ambulatory surgery centers.  With the ever increasing prominence, hospitals and Article 28 facilities now face a heightened regulatory scrutiny, need to comply with a slew of new and ever changing laws and regulations, and are involved in more complex business transactions than ever before.  To help our clients successfully overcome these new challenges, we offer the following services to our hospital and Article 28 clients:

• Corporate representation (including antitrust counseling) in connection with transactions, including mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and divestitures
• Regulatory counseling on Fraud and Abuse, Stark Law, and state regulatory compliance issues in transactions and other physician- integration arrangements
• Synthesizing tax-exempt law requirements with Fraud and Abuse rules in hospital-physician arrangements and joint ventures
• Seeking Advisory Opinions from federal regulatory agencies in appropriate cases
• Labor and employment issues
• HIPAA compliance
• Medicare and Medicaid (and other government health program) compliance activities, including internal investigations of potential noncompliance, responding to government inquiries and investigations, advise in connection with voluntary disclosures, negotiating corporate integrity agreements (CIAs)
• EMTALA compliance
• Establishing and implementing corporate compliance programs for hospital and ancillary providers within the health system
• Addressing medical staff matters, including fair hearing requirements and designing state-of-the-art medical staff bylaws

We have successfully represented Article 28 facilities in a wide variety of business transactions, including establishment, expansion, mergers and acquisitions and joint-venture deals.  We routinely counsel Article 28 facilities on the issues of regulatory compliance, Medicaid, Medicare and third party reimbursements, contracting and response to investigations and audits.  We defend Article 28 facilities in proceedings involving allegations of fraud and abuse.

We also represent Independent Diagnostic Testing Facilities (IDTFs) in all legal matters, including establishment, compliance counseling, reimbursement, audits and investigations and contracting with other providers.