Concentrating on corporate law, financial and real estate transactions, and litigation, Clark Hill Thorp Reed attorneys deliver expertise in multiple practice areas and industries. Our reputation is grounded in the highest ethical standards and strongest commitment to client service. In a world of increasing complexity, Clark Hill Thorp Reed provides confident and sure counsel. Our multidisciplinary approach means working hard and working smart on our clients’ behalf to provide innovative and cost-effective solutions to legal problems.
Clark Hill Thorp Reed's Health Care Law lawyers offer legal services to a wide spectrum of individuals and organizations involved in today’s health care environment.
Our health care clients include:
- Hospitals
- Nursing homes
- Physicians
- Medical staffs
- Health plans
- Hospices
- Laboratories
- Home Health Agencies
- Integrated Systems
- Equipment suppliers
Our representation of health care clients encompasses all aspects of the law affecting those entities. We provide advice with respect to general corporate transactions (including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and other reorganizations), privacy of medical information, capital finance and reimbursement issues, federal and state health regulatory issues (including fraud and abuse, anti-referral and anti-kickback matters), labor and employment issues, tax matters (including tax-exempt issues), real estate transactions and compliance matters. Our health care lawyers have extensive experience in medical staff issues, health care contracts, individual employment agreements and collective bargaining, peer review matters, and faculty practice arrangements with hospitals.
Our attorneys are prepared to respond to the demanding and fast-changing aspects of the health care environment and have the necessary experience to provide advice and assistance in structuring transactions and documenting business relationships in this highly regulated, but continually evolving area of practice.
Entering the United States market is an important business strategy and consideration for foreign companies in the high technology, life sciences and green energy industries. The United States market is large and a traditional leader in technology and pharmaceutical products. Successfully establishing a presence in the United States can substantially help a foreign business increase its market share both in the United States market and in its home market.
Employer health plans (and insurers for insured plans) are required to prepare and distribute a document called a Summary of Benefits and Coverage (“SBC”). The purpose is to assist individuals in understanding and comparing their health coverage options. The SBC is in addition to, and not in lieu of, the Summary Plan Description (SPD) that employers must already provide to participants.
Since the Affordable Care Act (“Act”) became law in March of 2010, the question we benefits attorneys are most often asked is, “Don’t you think health care reform is going to go away (be repealed) (be ruled unconstitutional)?” We consistently have answered “no.” And despite the opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued on August 12, 2011, our answer stays the same.
For now, President Obama’s decision not to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) should not affect how employers administer their employee benefit plans. This Communiqué explains the President’s decision and its impact on employer-sponsored plans.
Health care reform creates new challenges for plan sponsors. They may face significant excise tax penalties for noncompliance, as well as participant claims under Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) enforcement rules. Modulating it all is the fact that the mandates are “people-friendly.” In the final analysis, every reader of this article is a person who may ultimately benefit when the time comes to be a consumer of care.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-152), combined, make up the law commonly referred to as Health Care Reform. This article refers to Health Care Reform as the Affordable Care Act or the ACA.
The Nov. 24 issue of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine included an article by Dr. David C. Ring, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, that might have made defense counsel cringe. In the article, Ring vividly describes how a series of personal and systemic mistakes led him to operate on the wrong arm of a 65-year-old woman. Through this disclosure, Ring hoped that others would learn from and avoid his traumatic mistake.
In his Jan. 10 opinion piece, Professor Ronald Rotunda argues that "not buying [health] insurance, like not buying spinach, is not an economic act," and therefore the individual mandate is unconstitutional. Health care, however, is not spinach, and his analogy deserves a failing grade.
As you know, with the passage of the Temporary Extension Act of 2010, eligibility for the 15 month COBRA subsidy was recently extended by Congress to cover involuntary terminations occurring through March 31, 2010.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently published an interim final “breach notification” rule (HHS Rule), which clarifies several requirements of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). The HHS Rule was developed in conjunction with the recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule, which pertains to breaches by vendors of personal health records and certain other entities not covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
