Health Law Advisor

Both the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General have long urged (and in many cases, mandated through settlements that include Corporate Integrity Agreements and through court judgments) that health care organizations have "top-down" compliance programs with vigorous board of directors implementation and oversight. Governmental reach only increased with the publication by DoJ of the so-called Yates Memorandum, which focused government enforcers on potential individual liability for corporate management and directors in ...

Every hospital merger has three critical components that board members and senior management need to consider, and which can provide a great analytic framework within which to evaluate options early in the process of consider a transaction. By no means are these three the most important in every transaction, but every hospital merger I've worked on required careful attention to, and a very clear understanding of, these components.

1.         Structure:  Transaction structure can seem a bit technical and legalistic, but understanding transaction structure is key to understanding core ...

Organizations considering a significant transaction have a lot to think about.  One of the most important is making certain that relationships with key constituents and stakeholders are appropriately maintained and managed.  Too frequently, community hospitals and community health systems underestimate the scope and importance of those relationships.

Most of us can rattle-off a short list of key constituents and stakeholders for community hospitals and community health systems.

Here's my standard list, together with a short description of why they are important:

• Board ...

In the latest application of the law of unintended consequences….

As you may know, on May 16, 2012, CMS issued a final rule revising the conditions of participation by hospitals in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. (Download the final rule.) Among other things, the final rule includes a provision requiring that at least one member of a hospital's medical staff be included on the governing body of the hospital or hospital system.

This provision did not appear in the proposed rule, and was apparently added to the final rule in response to commenters who suggested that CMS's proposal to ...