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| What Is Health Law? |
Health law is the body of business and regulatory law uniquely applicable to healthcare providers, third party payors, and others that provide or pay for health care. The experienced health lawyer has in-depth knowledge both of this complex and multifaceted industry and of the laws and regulations that affect it, and brings that knowledge to bear on the problems and opportunities faced by those working in it.
Application of health law requires the integration of diverse legal principles. It starts with a good working knowledge of contract law, corporate law, tort law, criminal law, and administrative law — but there is more to it than that. Special state and federal laws and regulations, as well as industry practices and unavoidable contractual provisions, specify who is allowed to provide healthcare services, regulate how providers must operate their businesses and structure their financial relationships, set requirements intended to assure quality of care, mandate certain activities, and criminalize certain business arrangements that are completely legal in other economic sectors. In evaluating a proposed business arrangement, a health lawyer takes all these laws, practices and provisions into account. A health lawyer also considers the possible effects on a provider's exposure to tort liability, antitrust risk, and its ability to receive payment for its healthcare services.
Since both the industry and the law governing it are constantly changing, the health lawyer, by concentrating on this one industry, is able to develop and maintain a level of knowledge and expertise that exceeds what may be practical for lawyers in other fields to achieve, especially in areas such as the Fraud & Abuse laws, Medicare and Medicaid, hospital-physician relations, medical research, the prohibitions against compensation in connection with referrals, and the federal patient-privacy regulations.
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