What is Health Law?
Health law is unique in that it's a practice area focused on an industry, not a body of law. Health law encompasses all aspects of the legal system governing the organization, financing, and delivery of health care services. Because of its breadth, health law affords attorneys the opportunity to practice law in a variety of areas or to develop a specialty in a specific niche area. Attorneys practicing in the field may touch on all of the following areas at some time, or may concentrate their practice in a particular subspecialty.
Antitrust
Competition in the health field is controversial, which has resulted in new opportunities for health law attorneys to deal with antitrust issues, whether from a prosecution or defense stance, or simply in terms of client counseling. Antitrust issues often arise in connection with medical staff privileging decisions, health trade association activities and joint ventures and acquisitions.
Contracts
The entire health delivery system, particularly where third-party reimbursement is concerned, is premised on a series of contracts?generally with government agencies, insurers, physicians, and institutional providers of care and suppliers of services. Contract law is thus directly or indirectly involved in most health care practices.
Corporate/Transactional
Corporate law issues arise during hospital or provider establishment, acquisitions, joint ventures, financings, or during facility construction, expansion or dissolution, whether of a single provider, or a provider chain. Related issues include state and federal health planning requirements, licensure obligations and a myriad of other concerns.
Criminal Law
Issues of medical malpractice can involve both civil and criminal law. A major practice area involves Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse issues, which encompass administrative, corporate law, and contract questions, in addition to their criminal applications. Attorneys with expertise in this area may assist in structuring contracts so as to avoid fraud and abuse problems, and may also represent clients who are under investigation.
Elder Law
There is a growing need for attorneys who understand elder law issues. Issues of elder law frequently arise in the health law context, including advance directives, guardianship, long-term care, income maintenance, property management, healthcare funding, and elder abuse.
Health Policy/Bioethics
In the rapidly growing area of health law, the most exciting and controversial issues arise in the realm of heath policy and bioethics. Bioethics and policy issues cover a wide variety of vital emerging issues concerning health law and society such as stem cell research, the human genome project, and reproductive rights. Individuals who study bioethics and health policy may find themselves researching and writing legislative initiatives concerning the legal and ethical applications of pharmaceutical breakthroughs, emerging medical technology, and various health care plans. In addition, these individuals may find employment with bioethics consulting groups and ethics committees, which are used by hospitals when making difficult decisions, including resource allocation.
Intellectual Property/Life Sciences
Intellectual Property issues such as patents and trademarks inevitably arise with the development of new technologies. An increasing interest in the therapeutic uses to which the products of biomedical research can be applied has made these issues far more critical and complex in recent years.
Labor
The delivery of health care is extremely labor intensive. Common issues in a health law labor law practice include unionization of health care workers, equal employment opportunity matters, occupational health and safety, and related matters.
Litigation
Many attorneys in health law practice are involved in litigation. Some specialize in administrative litigation before components of the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Labor Relations Board, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and related government agencies. Other attorneys concentrate on litigation before state and federal judicial bodies. A litigation practice can cover all the areas listed above, or be limited to specialized issues, such as medical malpractice.
Regulatory
Regulations currently cover virtually every aspect of the health care delivery system. For providers of health services, regulations dictate their organization (health planning, certificates of need), their certification (Medicare, Medicaid) and their funding (Medicare, Medicaid, and other third party payers). For consumers of health services regulations determine the eligibility of third-party reimbursement, as well as, in part, the quality of the services received. Medical societies and their individual members are governed by state and federal licensure requirements and by rate setting provisions. The list of agencies and organizations that regulate health care delivery is extensive and spans local, state, and federal levels.
Tax
Tax planning and analysis issues arise when attorneys are structuring corporate acquisitions, mergers and consolidations, reorganizations, or joint ventures for their health care client.
