The healthcare environment is complex and varied—with changing regulations, legal obstacles, and financial pressures. We help providers and entrepreneurs make good, legally sound business decisions. Our industry team advises clients, from established health systems to technology companies revolutionizing healthcare delivery, on consolidation, digital transformation, and meeting the demand for cost-effective and documented quality.

Defining healthcare M&A in the PNW 

What’s pushing financial and clinical integration in healthcare? New reimbursement schemes, scalability, and cost controls, to name a few factors. As one of the first and largest healthcare law teams in the Pacific Northwest, we keep you in front of market forces.

For example, when a local health clinic sought a financial lifeline to maintain service to its metropolitan community, we protected the clinic’s interests. The successful combination greatly expanded patient access to healthcare in a competitive region. Our depth in healthcare M&A and collaborations includes finance, and it helps us spot potential pitfalls and find solutions to the unique business issues physicians face. Nonprofit and for-profit healthcare clients include:

• Hospital and health systems
• Physicians, medical groups, and dentists
• Ambulatory surgery centers
• Assisted living and long-term care facilities
• Community care
• Specialty insurers
• Technology companies
• Digital healthcare startups
• Vendors and ancillary services (laboratories, diagnostic ‎imaging)‎

Attending to the business of healthcare

Schwabe's industry-focused counsel can address traditional federal and state healthcare law, such as accreditation and changes in payment and healthcare delivery systems. Virtual healthcare and telemedicine have arrived in a big way, and we can help you navigate their many challenges.

Our focus is on what is necessary to stabilize and grow your operations on all platforms. Ways to decipher new privacy laws. How purchasing a medical building differs from buying an office building—and which tax strategies could unwittingly jeopardize accreditation.

We also lead clients in their business transactions and resolve issues that arise in employment, antitrust, tax, corporate governance, real estate, litigation, intellectual property, and more.

Cybersecurity and data breaches present a major challenge for healthcare providers. Our resources dig deeper than a compliance consultant’s checklist, providing analysis, not just process. We help clients develop new services and products, while complying with multiple states’ laws and patients’ desire for transparency.

Relieving the compliance burden

Regulatory compliance is an industry pillar. No healthcare provider is immune from the government’s heightened interest in fraud and abuse matters. We help prevent regulatory violations and ardently defend you should inquiries or an investigation arise.

Billing practices also carry complex regulatory standards and plan requirements. Reimbursement rules from Medicare, Medicaid, insurers, and other payors continually shift. Our experience structuring and negotiating agreements and preventive programs helps providers minimize reimbursement problems.

Influencing the future of healthcare

Schwabe’s industry team navigates the law on your behalf. Many of our attorneys have advanced degrees in ‎genetics and microbiology, as well as experience in state and federal agencies, ‎public policy, nursing, and computer sciences. We are long-serving contributors to healthcare organizations, including:

• American Health Lawyers Association
• National Institute on Health Care Fraud
• Oregon Ambulatory Surgery Center Association
• Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems
• Oregon Health Care Association (Long-Term Care)
• Oregon Medical Association
• Oregon State Bar Health Law Section
• Washington State Society of Healthcare Attorneys

Significant Transactions

• Represent hospitals in sales or affiliations, creation of ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), imaging centers, endoscopy centers, and joint hospital service lines.
• Created Oregon’s first Accountable Care Organization (ACO) qualified for participation in the Medicare Shared Savings Program.
• Represent hospitals and specialty medical groups in joint ventures, both for-profit and charitable, and physician-hospital organization (PHO) formations.

Physician Relationships

• Created independent physician associations (IPAs) in Oregon, Washington and Texas, some of which are affiliated with large healthcare systems.
• Represented over 1,500 Oregon dentists in Board of Dentistry matters and in practice acquisitions and sales.
• Advise on acquisition of physician practices, physician recruitment and employment, and compliance with the Stark and Anti-Kickback laws and the Internal Revenue Code.
• Advise hospitals and physicians on the revision of medical staff bylaws, medical staff peer review, the conduct of medical staff fair hearings, and ‎reports to the National Practitioner Data Bank.
• Successfully obtained nonimmigrant visas and permanent residence status for key physicians and researchers for a major medical university.

Regulatory Compliance

• Represent a leading cancer center in grant compliance for its academic researchers.
• Provide HIPAA compliance advice and data breach coaching.
• Represent numerous clients nationally in state and federal governmental investigations.

Antitrust

• Provide antitrust advice to hospitals and health systems, healthcare facilities, and medical and dental networks.

Risk Management

• Provide on-site general counsel services to a regional non-profit health organization for nearly two years during a national search for a replacement.‎
• Provide data breach preparation, response and recovery solutions to the largest single specialty physician group west of the Mississippi.

Healthcare Litigation

• Represent hospitals and clinics in anti-trust litigation, unfair trade practices litigation and contract disputes, as well as individual clients in peer review disputes and licensure matters for the health professions.

Events

Legal Articles