What can an experienced San Diego and California healthcare attorney from the Watkins Firm do to support your practice, healthcare business or career?  The Watkins Firm has served the medical business and healthcare community of San Diego and throughout California for more than four decades.  California is one of the most challenging states in which to operate a medical business or healthcare practice.  Complex federal, state and local laws and ordinances govern virtually every aspect of healthcare related operations.

3 Important Elements to Look For in a California Healthcare Attorney:

• Nothing can replace experience.  Look for a law firm with extensive experience in both the healthcare industry and your specific areas of practice or focus.
• Governance and compliance are essential to any business in the medical profession.  Federal, state and local laws, regulatory requirements and ordinances must be fulfilled in every aspect of your practice or healthcare business.
• Look for a law firm that can handle every aspect of your practice or healthcare business from formation (including a Management Services Organization or MSO) and contracts, to governance and compliance and dispute resolution.

Healthcare Business Formation

The formation of a medical practice, healthcare business or medical company is a complex legal process here in California.  California provides a special entity known as a “Professional Corporation” which provides specific protections and advantages to licensed medical professionals.  A Management Service Organization or MSO can prove to be a profitable and efficient strategy for lowering operational costs, managing non-medical tasks such as accounting and tax compliance, billing, collections and compliance with all regulatory issues, as well as the provision of and hardware and software required to operate the business.

This is why it is important to work with an experienced San Diego and California healthcare attorney from the Watkins Firm.  California and federal laws place important limitations on the ownership and structure of a healthcare-related entity and there are many risks associated with professional entities and MSOs that must be managed and mitigated.

Governance and Compliance

Effective strategies to ensure vigilant governance and compliance not only protects the corporate veil but ensures compliance with a variety of regulatory issues such as:

• Billing practice fraud
• Referral and kick-back violations under Stark Law provisions
• HIPAA compliance
• Health and Safety / Cal/OSHA
• Employment from hiring and contracting through management, evaluations, discipline and/or termination

We build strong relationships with our clients to ensure consistent employment and regulatory compliance while protecting the entity and its stakeholders.

Efficient Healthcare Dispute Resolution

Sooner or later a dispute or lawsuit is going to develop, and you want an experienced San Diego and California healthcare attorney who can defend and protect your interests, while working to resolve the matter quickly and efficiently.  Your Watkins Firm attorney works to develop a thorough, well-documented chronology of events and mastery of potential damages.  These are the tools required to gain the attention of opposing parties and their counsel and work to seek a leveraged, negotiated resolution.  The Watkins Firm is able to resolve the vast majority of our business disputes and lawsuits through effective, leveraged negotiation.  This is the fastest, most cost-efficient manner in which to resolve any healthcare business dispute or lawsuit.

Pro-Tip: “Broadly speaking, healthcare providers are supposed to provide efficient, honest, non fraudulent care for people’s health and all of the processes that go into making them able to do so. And bill for it. Bill, the federal government, bill private insurance is included. And there are several departments that oversee things like that. There’s your Department of Health and Human Services. There’s Department of Managed Healthcare that does private and public health, that has their guidelines and regulations. There’s compliance with HIPAA. There’s compliance with anti-kickback statutes. 

Well, I’m a lawyer. I do have regulation too, but most are not told where they can get their customers from. And doctors and lawyers are, and doctors and healthcare care providers are really told. They’re told on a state level, if you want to get these kind of clients, you better do it in certain ways. Otherwise you are going to be in trouble and you’ll be paying penalties and you’ll be subject to licensed hearings and fines and suspension of business and everything you can imagine. And then on the federal side, they have the stark laws, anti-kickback statutes there too. If you want to work for Medicare or any federal budget, you’ve got to comply with those as well, which say you cannot have any referral source unless it meets one of the exemptions under the statute. And when you form your company, you have to have that in mind, and you have your business model and your plan in healthcare, there’s a fourth coach, and there’s your lawyer banker, your accountant, and also a compliance coach or a manager or director that you can go to that is experienced in this as well.

Well, your billing has got to be coded billing that’s got to comply. So you have to hire people who do billing and let’s use an outside source. And most providers split between that. They may have an M S O as we talked about, just to do their billing, but that has to meet all the requirements separating the anti-kickback statutes, and that has to be on a state and federal level. That’s one of the issues we do when we form and represent and merge and sell and acquire different healthcare entities. 

Well, as healthcare lawyers, we understand your business model. Like we talked before, you’ve got to know the business model. You’ve got to understand what your clients are doing with respect to their services, and the services are provided by people. And you got to hire those people and you have to have office manuals, instructions that comply not just with the general law like your regular lawyer would give you, but also make sure that they’re going to comply with HIPAA. There’s individual responsibilities for everyone who deals with healthcare records. In addition to the big boss, you are going to be responsible if you get a job there. And that should be in your employee practices manual. So everybody knows where everybody stands.

M S O is the hot topic every year by the legislature. They would like to stop that relationship, even though it’s what runs a lot of healthcare organizations. Everyone has got a specialty. Consider it this way. You’ve got a specialty. You are great at billing. You are great at admin management. You are great at equipment leases. You are great at dealing with landlords. You’re great at a lot of things. And you can go to a healthcare organization and say, you’re losing money you should be keeping on the business side. I could do better. The profit I would make you just for my doing my job would pay for the fees. I’m going to manage the business side of the house so you can focus on exceptional healthcare, and expanding your practice. Now, that would be a wonderful M S O partner.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

Your Experienced San Diego Healthcare Attorney from the Watkins Firm

Your experienced San Diego healthcare attorney from the Watkins Firm provides valuable advice, counsel and legal services from the formation of an entity through operations, dispute representation and resolution and ultimately the sale, acquisition or merger associated with your practice or entity.

Our healthcare clients value the direct, insightful conversations we share, our extensive knowledge and scope of legal services and the depth of experience and legal skill we bring to the table.  We invite you to review our podcast Episode 10 – The Importance of a Strong Corporate Attorney as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.