Are you searching for an experienced business attorney for a San Diego medical practice or healthcare entity? How can a firm with 40+ years of experience representing local, California, and national medical and healthcare businesses in every aspect of business, mergers and acquisitions, Management Services Organizations (MSOs), compliance, dispute resolution, formation, and associated transactions, help your medical practice or healthcare entity thrive? Establishing and managing any California medical practice, healthcare-related business, surgery center, urgent care facility, or physician group is governed by complex federal, state and local laws and regulations covering both corporate law and the delivery of health care.
Key Takeaways When Looking for an Experienced Attorney for a San Diego Medical Practice or Healthcare Entity:
- You will need an experienced, proven law firm during the formation, management, or transaction of any California medical practice, healthcare-related business, surgery center, urgent care facility, or physician group.
- Medical practices and healthcare entities are governed by complex federal, state and local laws and regulations covering both corporate law and the delivery of health care. California has its own unique and extensive layers of legal, regulatory, and compliance issues.
- Management Services Organizations (MSOs) are constantly under revision here in California. An MSO provides extensive opportunities to improve every aspect of the business side of healthcare. These entities also carry extensive risk and compliance responsibilities, and are constant targets of California legislators.
- Look for an experienced attorney and law firm with decades of experience serving California healthcare entities and medical practices, who can handle every aspect of business formation, contracting, governance and compliance, dispute resolution, as well as mergers and acquisitions.
Proven Business Attorneys for Medical Practices and Healthcare Business Entities
The Watkins Firm has more than four decades of experience serving the San Diego and California business and healthcare / medical practice business communities. We provide business formation, mergers and acquisitions, healthcare and physician employment contract drafting and review, licensing and distribution agreements, healthcare corporate governance and regulatory compliance, as well as the cost-effective and timely resolution of business and healthcare-related disputes. California is, perhaps, the most difficult state in which to practice medicine or operate a healthcare business entity. Our experienced attorneys help to your medical entity to meet and exceed the complex array of legal requirements and compliance issues, while protecting the underlying practice or business and profitably accomplishing its goals and objectives.
Strategies such as the Management Services Organization or MSO
Your experienced attorney for a San Diego medical practice or healthcare entity from the Watkins Firm can help you to evaluate and implement strategies to improve the quality of patient care and satisfaction while preserving or improving the profitability of your organization. A Management Services Organization or MSO has become an important ingredient in any successful healthcare practice or business strategy.
California has strict laws regarding the “corporate practice of medicine” but it is absolutely possible to implement an entity which can assume many of the “corporate” aspects of a medical or healthcare-related business without participation in the practice of medicine. An MSO provides important supportive services including but not limited to:
- Provision of real estate / facilities
- Supporting vendor contracts and the management of business operations such as billing, collections, and taxes
- Provision of computer hardware, software, networking and backup to support operations
- Distribution and sales of products
Draw on the Watkins Firm’s 40+ years of proven extensive experience with medical practices, healthcare businesses, and the integration of an MSO or multiple MSOs to support your healthcare business and financial goals and objectives.
Healthcare and Medical Practice Governance and Compliance
Governance and compliance is a central, complex issue for any California healthcare business or medical practice. Compliance with the Affordable Health Care Act and Medicare’s billing coding can substantially impact the smooth daily operations as well as reimbursement for services and care provided. Compliance with HIPAA, Stark Law and CalOSHA (to name but a few) must be regularly reviewed and updated to reflect changes in procedures and policies.
Whether you are an individual physician, or a large health care practice or facility, Your Watkins Firm experienced attorney for a San Diego medical practice or healthcare entity provides decades of experience supporting San Diego medical practices and healthcare businesses.
We work with medical professionals and health care entities as well as those who are managing a San Diego medical practice in every aspect of business and operations including, but not limited to formation, operations, governance and compliance, acquisition, hiring of medical professionals and physicians (and associated agreements) through insurance coding and billing. Our clients value the sound advice we provide. California is absolutely the hardest state in which to be an employer. Your Watkins Firm attorneys provide sound counsel in every aspect of your role as a California employer, and can help to quickly and efficiently resolve any dispute or employment defense matter.
Dispute Management
Our general counsel for a San Diego medical practice or healthcare entity will all manage any regulatory compliance issue or legal dispute which may arise. What happens when a dispute arises between those who own a California Professional Corporation? What should you do if you are concerned about misappropriation of funds, commingling or other concerning behaviors? The Watkins Firm takes a unique approach to these challenges which is designed to resolve the issue at hand in a cost-effective and timely manner. We represent clients in every legal venue including negotiations, the filing or defense of a lawsuit, settlement conferences, mediation, arbitration, and at trial.
Buying, Merging or Selling Your Practice
When it comes time to acquire or merge with another entity, buy a practice or sell your own we will work with your management team to ensure that effective due diligence, contracts and associated processes facilitate the goals and objectives you establish. Ask about our extensive experience in literally thousands and thousands of healthcare-related acquisitions, sales, APAs, and mergers.
Pro-Tip: “It’s wonderful. It’s complicated, and it is completely involved. Unlike any other law we do. We’ve been doing this since the 1980s, representing doctors and medical entities, and physicians are the smartest people on the planet and they operate in laws that are the most complicated for any business I’ve ever heard of. How’d you get into working with doctors? My first job as an attorney I started working for an attorney named Chris Popov, who’s with me today. And that’s what his practice was, forming, selling and buying healthcare providers, companies, forming medical corporations, PT clinics, MRI centers, psychiatric groups that operated in multiple states, all kinds of complex laws, medical rules and regulations. And it, it took many, many years to master this area of law. I’m still learning.
The medical practice act, business and professions code section 2052 and the California business and professions code section 2400, generally cover a lot of what you can and can’t do. And one of the things you have to understand is who and can’t own a healthcare practice and what types of procedures you can use to facilitate the sale of a healthcare practice, to other licensed professionals. And also, how can we involve other business entities that aren’t licensed professionals in such a transaction?
The California Professional Corporation is a healthcare provider’s only business vehicle. Healthcare providers can’t be limited liability companies. They can’t be these other types of entities. They can be general partners, which is severe liability, or they can be professional healthcare corporations, which shields them from personal liability. To some extent, although a licensed doctor, the one who’s doing the work is always going to be personally liable. That’s why they have to spend so much money on malpractice insurance, but it also is a vehicle where you can bring in other shareholders who qualify. And there are a list of exceptions. Usually most of the owners of a professional corporation providing healthcare have to be licensed healthcare personnel, but there’s a list of exceptions to that law, but it is what doctors use to do business.
Most healthcare businesses have realized the cost savings and profitable advantages of Management Services Organization or MSOs. They can enter into agreements with other corporations or other business service providers. They can buy their own ancillary service providers as long as they comply with all the requirements for that too. So a sole medical practice through their medical corporation can branch out into other forms of business if they know how to do it. And if they work with an experienced lawyer at the Watkins Firm, we can structure everything so that they’re in compliance with Medicare and also their licensed rules and regulations for California, and any other state they’re in.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner
Your Watkins Firm Experienced Attorney for a San Diego Medical Practice or Healthcare Entity
Your experienced attorney for a San Diego medical practice or healthcare entity from the Watkins Firm is part of a team with more than 40 years of proven experience and legal skill to provide sound advice, counsel and legal services to ensure successful operations, protect your interests, your license(s), and the corporate veil. We help from the moment of formation through the merger or sale of an entity, and every legal business aspect in between including the fulfillment of California’s extensive employment laws as an employer in this state. We help to efficiently resolve disputes, and facilitate the successful and profitable operations of your medical entity.
Now more than ever, San Diego medical professionals, businesses and healthcare related entities need the advice, services and dispute resolution services of the Watkins Firm. We invite you to review our Podcasts “Episode 7: Medical Practices and Healthcare Businesses, Episode 30 – Management Services Organizations or MSOs, and Episode 37 – Medical Practice and Healthcare Governance and Compliance,” as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.
Meet Daniel Watkins:
Daniel W. Watkins is a true people person who sincerely listens. He cares deeply about what others are going through. Dan enjoys digging into the facts and finding creative solutions to problems. He contributes his insights candidly and constructively.
Dan’s interest in people make him deeply invested in every relationship and his exuberant personality makes him a true litigator. Dan fights for his clients with a fierce and calculated commitment.
Dan has practiced in the areas of business, medical practices and healthcare business, high tech/science, real estate and employment defense law since 1987. He is a trusted litigation strategist and true trial attorney with over 50 jury and bench trials to his credit. Dan has successfully represented both large companies and individuals and achieved substantial victories in well-publicized trials throughout California and the U.S.
He is experienced in business and corporate formation and administration, as well as all forms of alternative dispute resolution, including binding arbitration and mediation.
THE ROAD TO BECOMING A BUSINESS LAWYER AND LITIGATOR
Dan has almost 40 years of experience working with, for and against some of the largest insurance companies in the country. He has successfully tried and litigated cases in the areas of Healthcare Compliance, Commercial Litigation, Unfair Business Practices, Fraud, Breach of Contract, Battery, Premises Liability, Product Defect, Medical Malpractice, Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, Construction Defect, as well as Unfair Competition, Defamation, and Trade Secrets.
In December 2003, Dan commenced litigation against Health South Surgery Centers-West, Inc and its’ subsidiaries, exposing the company’s extensive mismanagement and misconduct of its’ surgery centers. Dan has also been asked by some of California’s largest municipalities and corporations to conduct legally required investigations into matters involving alleged employment discrimination and harassment.
