Health Care

Health care is among the most dynamic, complex and highly regulated industries. As new medical technologies emerge and knowledge grows, health care executives and service providers are consistently challenged to respond and adapt to evolving marketplace forces. Stone Pigman partners with our health care clients to handle a wide range of litigation and business matters.

Firm lawyers represent the following entities in a full spectrum of litigation matters related to health care:

• Hospitals and hospital service districts
• Diagnostic and treatment ancillary facilities
• Large and small physician groups and sole practitioners
• Nursing homes and continuing care retirement communities
• Pharmaceutical companies
• Academic institutions
• Health care insurers

The firm's litigation practice encompasses transactional, commercial, professional liability, administrative and regulatory issues, including:

• stockholder and partnership agreements;
• product liability defense;
• patents and copyrights as to medical inventions, processes and tests;
• nursing and continuing care retirement home matters, including liability issues;
• service contracts between physicians and hospitals;
• peer review and medical staff disputes;
• purchases and sales of hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies and medical practices;
• financing of Medicare and Medicaid receivables;
• Medicare audits;
• securities;
• antitrust issues;
• clinical research issues;
• Institutional Review Board procedures;
• malpractice defense and policy review;
• ethical issues; and
• employment, compensation and management agreements.

Recent representative matters include:

• The firm represents a chain of nine privately held nursing homes, and the related management company, in all litigation matters relating to the nursing homes and the management company.
• The firm represents a group of affiliated home health agencies in contractual and employment-related litigation.
• The firm is lead counsel for Monarch Dental and Affordable Care, dental practice management companies, in regulatory litigation against the state licensing board.
• The firm successfully represented a major local hospital in defense of an attempt by hospital-based physicians to nullify a contract as an alleged violation of the federal Medicare anti-kickback statute and obtained an injunction requiring the physicians to perform their contract through its expiration date.
• The firm has recently represented various hospital service districts over a variety of matters, including the scope of their authority under the hospital service district statute and the validity of a contract with hospital-based physicians challenged as a violation of the federal Medicare anti-kickback statute.

We also offer services in our business health care practice.