Healthcare

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Like our clients, we welcome innovation in healthcare and the challenges it brings.

Overview

Our healthcare clients look to us for counsel as they explore new opportunities and navigate legal and operational challenges. They trust us to find solutions that are practical, effective, and efficient. This is our commitment to our clients. Our mutual rewards are long-term, loyal relationships that strengthen our clients and improve our service.

Experience + Engagement = Efficiency
We deliver exceptional legal services to leading providers of healthcare services and technology. Our depth of experience allows us to answer questions practically and quickly. We take our knowledge of the healthcare industry and focus on our client's culture, objectives and concerns to develop feasible, actionable options. You will receive what you need when you need it. We strive to make working with Davis Wright Tremaine easy and enjoyable by prioritizing service and understanding our clients' needs.

Integrated Expertise
Our lawyers are organized in teams designed to address client needs efficiently. Groups like our healthcare M&A team and our healthcare litigation and investigations practice include lawyers dedicated to a team approach. These teams anticipate and deliver what is needed, reducing the client's burden and ensuring the right issues are addressed by lawyers with the right expertise. Our teams are both experienced in healthcare and knowledgeable in relevant areas of law, including healthcare compliance, technology, M&A, tax, tax-exemption, labor and employment, antitrust, litigation, real estate, and finance.

Our Services

Antitrust

Our antitrust team has the experience and industry expertise to advise healthcare clients on any antitrust issue. We counsel, litigate, and represent clients before government antitrust authorities. We pride ourselves on tackling complex antitrust issues by finding creative and practical solutions to fulfill client’s business objectives. Our team has extensive healthcare industry knowledge, and we offer clients a deep bench of industry experts. We routinely advise on mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, competitor collaborations, medical staff privileges, provider networks, and contracting practices with payors, vendors, physicians, and staff.

Digital Health & Health Technology

DWT's clients are on the cutting edge of digital health and healthcare technology, and we are proud to counsel them through the rapidly evolving landscape of legal and regulatory issues that they face daily. The attorneys on the telemedicine, health information technology, and digital health teams work extensively with healthcare technology companies, hospitals, practice groups, and others on matters including regulatory compliance, mergers & acquisitions, acquisitions of electronic health record (EHR) systems for hospitals, software licensing and support service offerings, and private label custom e-commerce services. Our telehealth expertise encompasses credentialing, online prescribing, privacy and security, social networking, user-generated content, website privacy policies, and terms of use.

Labor & Employment

When it comes to the delivery of innovative legal services, few firms match the collaborative success of our Employment Services and Health Law groups. Our robust team of labor and employment attorneys has handled hundreds of matters for healthcare clients, including employment litigation (single and multiple plaintiff), physician lawsuits and arbitrations, and pre-litigation demand letters. We train supervisors and employees in best practices for handling workplace harassment and discrimination; represent them in proceedings before federal and state administrative agencies; and provide counsel on a range of personnel issues, including privacy matters, employment agreements, wage and hour matters, and workplace technology. We have one of the largest healthcare traditional labor practices on the West coast. From defending major healthcare systems in ULP charges and labor arbitrations to negotiating collective bargaining agreements with various unions, we have a lengthy history of successful representation. Many clients rely on our attorneys to advise on overall labor strategy and provide boots-on-the-ground support whenever needed.

Fraud & Abuse

DWT’s interdisciplinary healthcare compliance team has deep expertise in state and federal fraud and abuse regulations, physician self-referral laws, the full range of government and commercial healthcare benefit programs, healthcare governance, licensure, accreditation, and certificate of need. We help our clients navigate the healthcare regulatory maze and assist them in making voluntary disclosures, fulfilling reporting requirements, and responding to government investigations, surveys, and audits. DWT regularly assists in the assessment of clients’ compliance programs and the development of work plans and related investigations. We also have considerable experience defending False Claims Act lawsuits and responding to other government enforcement actions.

Healthcare M&A

Our approach is unique because our healthcare M&A lawyers are skilled in both M&A transactions and in health law. We provide our clients with a one-stop shop: comprehensive services to help successfully plan, negotiate, and implement healthcare affiliations, strategic alliances, joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions, and sales.

Investigations & Litigation

Our white collar investigations and government controversies lawyers work in concert with our leading healthcare practitioners to represent healthcare executives, professionals, and private and public entities in fraud investigations (internal and government-initiated) and enforcement actions related to government healthcare program billing. Our practitioners have decades of experience litigating healthcare fraud and similar controversies in federal and state courts, as well as before administrative tribunals including state licensing agencies.

Laboratory

DWT represents diagnostic laboratory clients throughout the US, including legacy, emerging, and start-up lab companies and health systems that own and operate diagnostic laboratories delivering clinical, molecular (generic), toxicology, and anatomical pathology testing in regional and national markets. We also represent commercial lab management firms and lab billing companies with services including compliance, fraud and abuse, and M&A.

Medical Staff

Our practice is a nationally recognized authority on medical staff relations, peer review, and governance. For decades, we have coordinated the internal activities of medical staffs and have mediated communications with both individual physicians and hospital leadership. We find ways to foster healthy hospital-staff relationships and implement needed changes efficiently and with comprehensive attention to legal compliance. When disputes arise, we work hard to find creative, appropriate, and compliant resolutions before peer review proceedings or litigation are required. If necessary, we are fully prepared to defend our clients in administrative hearings or litigation. Our attorneys also draft and revise medical staff bylaws, rules, and policies for compliance with legal and accreditation standards, and we are experienced in data bank and medical board reporting, physician and staff education, physician on-call requirements, and medical staff integration in multi-hospital health systems.

Payments, Compliance & EMTALA

The attorneys who support our reimbursement practice have familiarized themselves for decades with the operational goals of and challenges faced by large health systems, academic medical practices, behavioral health organizations and other healthcare providers. We help our clients interpret and understand statues, regulations and other policies governing reimbursement under Medicare, Medicaid, military payment programs, and local government payment programs, allowing them to maximize payment opportunities and steer clear of problems that may arise form non-compliance with reimbursement rules. Our knowledge of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement systems and schemes, including the enrollment and accreditation processes used by government reimbursement programs, also enables us to advise clients on the reimbursement implications of a variety of transactions and operational changes. Our Medicare appeals experience extends to cost report payment disputes, coverage disputes, provider status disputes, and civil money penalty disputes through administrative-level appeals through to judicial review, both at the trial court and appellate levels. We also represent clients in commercial third-party payor arrangements, assisting in contract negotiations, resolving disputes, and advising on compliance and accreditation programs.

Privacy & Security

For more than a decade, DWT’s nationally recognized health information privacy and security team has helped clients optimize their use of health information while guarding against breaches and legal risks. We are authorities on the ever-changing state and federal regulations surrounding the use, exchange, and protection of health information, including requirements under HIPAA and its omnibus rule, and also the HITECH Act. We counsel on breach detection and response, business associate contracts, information privacy and security policies, safeguards, and best practices for managing health data.

Tax-Exempt Organizations

Our TEO group works closely with our healthcare attorneys to provide coordinated, integrated advice on the issues that face today’s nonprofit healthcare organizations. We advise on federal and state tax exemption, mergers and acquisitions, tax-exempt bond financings, joint ventures, for-profit/nonprofit structures, unrelated business income tax, nonprofit governance, and executive compensation. Our attorneys counsel nonprofit hospitals on Section 501(r) compliance and represent nonprofit healthcare and medical research organizations in IRS examinations and challenges to tax exemption.
Our Approach to Client Service
Healthcare partner Bob Homchick explains how DWT’s breadth of experience and deep industry insight help clients achieve goals and avoid surprises.

Inspired & Qualified?

We are currently seeking candidates with strong healthcare legal experience to work with our team.
Join Us

Transactional

* Denotes experience completed at a prior firm

Regulatory/Compliance

* Denotes experience completed at a prior firm

Medical Staff

* Denotes experience completed at a prior firm

Litigation

Tax

Health Information Technology

Real Estate

Finance

Governance

Reimbursement

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Industry Contacts

Brydolf, Ingrid
Ingrid Brydolf
Partner
Co-Chair, Healthcare Law Practice
Portland
503.778.5240
Farber, Jason A.
Jason A. Farber
Partner
Chair, Healthcare M&A; Co-chair, Health Law Practice
Seattle
206.757.8041

Our Team

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