The purpose of the Health Law Section is to assist practitioners in deepening their understanding of Federal and state agencies, statutes and regulations that impact healthcare institutions, medical professionals, and healthcare related companies. Through this deepened understanding, the Health Law Section seeks to ensure that Utah practitioners have the requisite expertise to assist healthcare-related clients with a multitude of complex legal issues, including the following: • Compliance with federal and state laws, including HIPAA, EMTALA, Stark, and the Anti-Kickback Statute. • Medical staffing, employment agreements, credentialing, peer review, fair hearings, medical staff bylaws and internal policies, and procedures for institutions. • Recovery Audit Contractor (“RAC”) audits, Medicare and Medicaid appeals, billing and reimbursement issues, compliance investigations, allegations of “overpayments” or fraud, and the CMS self-disclosure process. • Compliance with the Affordable Care Act (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” or “PPACA”). • Professional license defense. • Group practice formation and joint ventures. • Real estate transactions and lease arrangements. • FDA rules and regulations, including ensuring compliance with the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, an amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the new Medical Device Excise Tax, and the FDA Safety and Innovation Act. On one hand, healthcare law is a focused, substantive area of the law addressing discrete subjects that one would find in a hornbook. However, healthcare law is also a subtopic that touches multiple other substantive areas of the law. Examples of the former include HIPAA, Federal and State Anti-kickback laws, and healthcare licensing laws. The latter segment involves PPACA as a subtopic of employment law. PPACA is an issue for tax attorneys and anti-kickback laws as a consideration for real estate transactions. In other words, most attorneys deal with healthcare law in some way, while others spend their entire practice on nothing else. The Health Law Section hopes to provide something for attorneys in both categories. The Section has sponsored continuing education programs that provide overviews of healthcare topics for general practitioners or those with a specialized health law focus. For example, the Section recently held CLEs to provide an overview of PPACA and another CLE on the new HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule. The Section is planning several CLEs in 2013 that will cover topics such as physician contracting, developments in anti-kickback laws, and what every employer should know about PPACA. Other goals of the Section are to identify healthcare attorneys in Utah, to provide a resource for other attorneys who need specific expertise in healthcare law, to provide opportunities for healthcare attorneys and other attorneys to network, and to provide public service through the Utah State Bar where expertise in health law is needed.
The charter officers are: Chair: Micah Vorwaller (801) 205-3972 vorwallerm@gmail.com
If any of this is relevant to your practice, please remember to check the Health Law Section box on your annual Utah State Bar dues and become a member.