Healthcare

Our team has delivered sophisticated legal services to the healthcare capital markets for more than three decades. We have served as bond, underwriter’s, bank and borrower’s counsel for billions of dollars of acute and sub-acute debt, financing, and refinancing assets relating to thousands of beds and units along many different service lines. We have contributed to the development of some of the most complex and innovative financing structures utilized by healthcare providers. We help clients with many kinds of regulatory and compliance issues that emerge following a bond transaction, including covenant and other defaults. We particularly excel in the sub-acute area, where our Public Finance lawyers have served as bond counsel for nearly every congregate care community financed in New Jersey and helped develop access to the tax-exempt debt market for these providers.

We protect the interests of hospitals and other healthcare providers in numerous mergers, acquisitions, consolidations and other major transactions. We have the experience and perspective necessary in these transactions, including structuring the deal, drafting and negotiating transaction documents, performing essential due diligence, obtaining regulatory and corporate approvals, and closing the transaction. We are fully prepared to advise our clients on the other legal issues that commonly arise during these transactions including antitrust, tax, real estate, environmental, employment and public finance. We have been involved in most of the “acquisition” transactions in New Jersey requiring approval under the New Jersey Community Health Care Assets Protection Act (CHAPA), N.J.S.A. 26:2H-7.10, et seq. We have advised clients in connection with the formation of New Jersey’s largest health systems, including complex debt restructurings involving the largest tax-exempt bond offerings through the new Jersey Health Care Facilities Financing Authority.

In close collaboration with our Tax lawyers, we regularly counsel our healthcare clients on tax and tax-exemption issues that arise from their operations and bond-financed facilities, including intermediate sanctions, executive compensation, governance, and property tax exemption. We are experienced in the formation and qualification of nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations, their foundations, and creating and reorganizing healthcare systems. We are also familiar with the tax laws and regulations that restrict or affect transactions between tax-exempt and taxable entities, including hospital–physician joint ventures, physician recruitment and employment contracts, and the formation of for-profit subsidiaries by tax-exempt organizations.

Our lawyers are dedicated to staying ahead of the developments regulating healthcare technology and information. We advise clients in operational, governance, and compliance matters, with a particular emphasis on privacy and data security in regulated industries, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards, and SSAE-16 and AT 101 requirements.

We provide legal counsel to healthcare clients on federal and state antitrust laws that are implicated in structuring hospital mergers, acquisitions, affiliations, and joint ventures. The need for such advice also arises in negotiating contracts and cooperative arrangements with health insurers, HMOs, and other third-party healthcare payers. Hospitals’ various relationships with physicians, as well as their efforts to regulate the conduct of their medical staffs, frequently implicate potential antitrust claims. We also counsel physician groups, pharmaceutical companies, medical supply distributors, and equipment manufacturers on a wide variety of competition issues. Our skilled trial and appellate lawyers are experienced in handling antitrust issues in all courts, and effectively and efficiently litigate cases in the healthcare field. Our team also assists clients in quickly and effectively responding to government inquiries and investigations.

Representing world-renowned research hospitals, our intellectual property team includes patent practitioners with advanced degrees in fields such as physics, material sciences, molecular biology, cell biology, immunology, biochemistry, microbiology, organic and polymer chemistry, and inorganic chemistry. We are experienced and innovative in developing strategies for protecting critical core technologies and patenting innovations based on our clients’ immediate and long-term business goals. We are also routinely involved in negotiating licenses for our clients, which include some of the biggest names in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, university, and life sciences fields. We build and manage our clients’ complex patent portfolios, protect their blockbuster biotech and small-molecule drugs, and develop global strategic plans.

We provide ongoing general legal counsel to hospitals and a variety of other healthcare providers. In this capacity, our lawyers field inquiries on a daily basis on the full spectrum of legal issues confronting management, including contracts, employee relations, insurance, liability, tax, and tax exemption. Our Healthcare lawyers have sufficient breadth of experience to handle these situations as they arise, but also have the ability to draw on other practices to meet each client’s unique needs.

Our Healthcare lawyers have a great deal of experience advising clients on governance and compliance issues. We work extensively with nonprofit healthcare clients in adopting governance best practices, including the formation of independent audit committees and adopting codes of conduct and conflicts-of-interest policies. We also assist clients in developing and completing corporate compliance programs, and have represented them in government investigations involving state and federal agencies, including NJDOH, USDHHS-Office of Inspector General, US Department of Justice, and SEC. We have also assisted clients in conducting internal investigations relative to possible violations of the law by their employees, contractors, or medical staff.

We regularly advise healthcare clients on all types of labor and employment issues. Having worked with healthcare institutions for decades, our practitioners understand the unique issues associated with operating a clinical environment on a regular basis. We handle preventive employment counseling, physician contract enforcement actions, internal investigations, policy development, management training, and employment litigation. We also assist clients with union-related matters, such as collective bargaining, unfair labor practice proceedings, and strike consultation. We also advise on wage and hour litigation, employment agreements, ERISA litigation, OSHA, immigration, and workers’ compensation issues.

Our Healthcare lawyers regularly advise our clients concerning the Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse and Stark implications of their existing operations, contracts, and transactions as well as new or potential relationships with physicians and other providers. We perform statutory and regulatory reviews and analyses and develop contracts and transactions that minimize fraud and abuse concerns. We also help examine and restructure existing arrangements to address potential problems as well as ongoing corporate compliance strategies.

An innovative structure can allow even a nonprofit organization to enjoy indirect benefits from federal and state tax incentives that promote investments in renewable energy and the growing green jobs economy. For example, our lawyers helped a nonprofit healthcare provider put together a state-of-the-art financing structure to support the development of a large-scale solar photovoltaic array that will provide up to 50% of the electrical power for the provider for 25 years.