Health Law Advisor

On April 30, 2019, Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski announced that the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) had published an updated version of the Criminal Division's 2017 guidance publication “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs.”  In making the announcement, Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski said the update was designed to “better harmonize the prior Fraud Section publication with other Department guidance and legal standards.”  He noted that DOJ also sought “to provide additional transparency in how [it] will analyze a company's ...

The Federal Trade Commission's ("FTC") recently submitted Congressional Budget Justification and Annual Performance Plan and Report contains helpful insight into the FTC's focus and expectations for the coming fiscal year.  Of particular note, is a slight shift of funds from activities designed to "protect consumers" to activities intended to "promote competition."  High on the FTC's list of actions designed to promote competition is continued scrutiny of the health care industry.  And to that end, the FTC reiterated its intention to, among other things:

Take action against ...

My earlier post explored various real estate strategies frequently used in hospital M&A transactions.  Each of those different approaches – using real estate assets to secure acquisition financing, increasing existing lines of credit, or monetizing the real estate assets through divestiture – reflect different objectives and opportunities.  But, real estate is more than "location, location, location" and "strategy, strategy, strategy"—there must also be "value, value, value".  The real estate market itself is the lynchpin to establishing the value of individual ...

Although not the only factor, government payment reform initiatives in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are widely perceived as driving health care market consolidation.  Perhaps more significantly than mergers between hospitals, the ACA has created new interest in mergers across service lines (as reported here,  here, and here).  Hospitals, physician groups, outpatient centers, post-acute providers, and even insurance carriers are combining with each other in all sorts of ways and at an accelerating pace. Depending on who you talk to in government,  this activity is (1)  paving the ...