Medical and Healthcare providers are faced with a myriad of challenges. They require attorneys who are well versed in both the healthcare business and the laws, regulations and rules that must be followed to succeed in the healthcare industry.
Every healthcare provider or healthcare business faces legal issues. These issues arises with employees, patients, partners, facilities, and compliance matters. Many medical practices don’t actively plan for their legal issues, rather they react when legal issues arise. At MedGC we view our legal service more as a partnership with our clients. We want to assist our clients in their own business and we want them to success. We are on-call for your practice and can provide advice and consultation when issues arise. But we also provide strategic planning to avoid many of the the day-to-day legal issues that arise in a practice.
Employee Issues
Like any other businesses, medical practices are subject to laws and regulations that govern the employer-employee relationship. Many laws, in recent years, have placed new requirements on organizations. For example, the ACA requires medical practices with 50 or more full-time employees (those that work at least 30 hours per week on average) to offer health insurance coverage to such employees and their dependents. As laws pertaining to the healthcare industry change, MedGC acts as a partner to ensure compliance and success . MedGC enables medical practices to devote time, energy and resources to their patients, rather than on the legal issues impact their practice.
Employment Manuals
An employment policy manual or employee handbook is one of the most effective tools to address the legal issues that medical practices face . Most medical practices either don’t have a manual or have an inadequately drafted handbook. Also it is common that the employee manuals is not updated and the terms of compliance with current laws or outdated. We can review and update your employment policy manuals or employee handbooks to ensure they are accurate and helpful.
Patient Issues
Difficult patients can raise additional concerns for a healthcare provider or entity. While providers may conclude that the best course of action is to terminate the provider/patient relationship, such action must be carefully handled to avoid patient abandonment allegations or breach of provider agreements with payors. Disgruntled patients can also create problems for providers by making complaints to various government entities thus any correspondence must be carefully handled.
Subpoenas and Medical Records Requests
Understanding the circumstances under which medical records may be released to someone other than the patient, as well as what charges can be imposed for the release of medical records, is an issue that frequently arises and requires consideration of both HIPAA and state law. Even though healthcare entities and providers may have written policies and procedures, situations often arise that have not previously been considered. It is often helpful to discuss these issues with counsel.
Policies and Procedures
In addition to HIPAA and compliance policies, we are often called upon to assist providers with other types of office policies that have health law considerations, such as social media use policies, policies regarding medical treatment of employees, etc.
