Are you starting a new healthcare business in California? The experienced San Diego-based healthcare and medical business attorneys at the Watkins Firm have more than four decades of experience in the formation of medical, dental, nursing or healthcare entities and supporting them through each phase of operations and growth.
3 Important Takeaways about Starting a New Healthcare Business in California:
- Our experienced and skilled attorneys will help you to select and establish the best corporate entity, such as a C Corporation or group of corporations for a healthcare-related business, or a California Professional Corporation and/or a Management Service Organization or MSO for medical practices.
- California’s Professional Corporation or “PC” provides several advantages to physicians groups and medical professionals. A California Professional Corporation provides extensive protections that are not available under an LLC, S-Corporation or C-Corporation.
- A Management Service Organization or MSO provides the opportunity for combining licensed medical professionals and their associated practice with investment capital and business experts who can increase the profitability of the business side of your healthcare business, separating it entirely from the practice of medicine.
Our experienced and skilled attorneys will help you to select and establish the best corporate entity, such as a C Corporation or group of corporations for a healthcare-related business, or a California Professional Corporation and/or a Management Service Organization or MSO for medical practices. We custom tailor corporate documents from our extensive, proven library that position your new entity or entities for prosperity.
Corporate Entities for Healthcare
California’s Professional Corporation or “PC” provides several advantages to physicians groups and medical professionals. A California Professional Corporation provides extensive protections that are not available under an LLC, S-Corporation or C-Corporation. For example, the actual legal structure of a PC ensures that individual practitioners are held separate from one another so that no one is held liable for the malpractice or negligence of another physician or licensed professional. The California PC also offers many valuable benefits such as the ability to increase the amount of contributions to retirement vehicles such as a 401(k) as well as tax deductions unavailable to other corporate structures for health, disability and life insurance as well as dependent care.
A Management Service Organization or MSO
A Management Service Organization or MSO provides the opportunity for combining licensed medical professionals and their associated practice with investment capital and business experts who can increase the quality of supportive services, offices or buildings, IT hardware and software and accounting and tax personnel who remain completely separate from the practice of medicine while contributing to the profitability of the entities while improving the patient experience and satisfaction scoring. There are potential risks for licensed professionals, but these exposures can be reduced or mitigated. This is why it is important to review your MSO plans with the experienced medical and healthcare attorneys at the Watkins Firm.
Your New Healthcare Business in California Needs an Experienced, Proven Medical Business Attorney
Starting a new healthcare business in California may be focused on providing medical products, research and services to markets here in the United States and around the world. This may require a single entity or a constellation of entities in order to provide the protections and operational flexibility needed to reach targeted markets. The selection of any entity is based upon the nature of the business it will conduct, while balancing many factors including the ability to conduct inter-state or international business or to hold other corporate entities. The Watkins Firm works closely with tax professionals who provide insight into how income is generated, where and when.
A Variety of Legal Services for Those Starting a New Healthcare Business in San Diego
The Watkins Firm provides a variety of legal services for those starting a new healthcare business in San Diego. You may require employment contracts for physicians, nurses, medical technicians and other employees, as well as extensive policies and procedures and employee handbooks that protect the practice and ensure compliance with all federal, state and local laws including OSHA, HIPPA and Sarbanes-Oxley.
We understand the primary nature of proper coding and insurance documentation and help to establish procedures and practices that prevent fraudulent practices by one of your business partners or an employee.
You may have intellectual property to protect, licensing and distribution agreements, and extensive responsibilities, laws and regulations to fulfill unique to the State of California from the prospective of an employer.
Extensive Experience with California Healthcare Businesses and Medical Practices
The Watkins Firm has extensive experience across more than four decades with healthcare businesses and the extensive regulatory compliance issues from a national perspective to those unique to California and San Diego. We provide ongoing business general counsel to keep you updated on employment law developments and represent you and your practice in many business related disputes. We know that starting a new healthcare business in San Diego is an exciting time, but it will also require a legal partner with deep experience and legal skill and knowledge in the healthcare industry as well as a common sense approach to business.
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
We will help to make the process of starting a new healthcare business as easy and straight-forward as possible while providing the insight and supportive legal services you would expect of an experienced healthcare business law firm. We invite you to review our Podcast Episode 7 – Medical Practices and Healthcare Businesses, 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.
