Health Care

Health care law is a rapidly evolving legal specialty. Technological advances, coupled with skyrocketing delivery costs, have necessitated and will continue to necessitate policy reform and a changing legal landscape. Health care law includes many of the same legal challenges as other business entities, including employment law and contract law concerns. The increased percentage of for-profit (as opposed to non-profit) healthcare institutions has strengthened that proposition. Nonetheless, the number of legal issues peculiar to health care law continues to rise. This trend will inevitably continue as cost containment concerns drive increased state and federal regulation of the industry.

Health care law comprises diverse bodies of law affecting every aspect of the health care delivery system. Among the many subspecialties of health care law are Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, health care fraud, hospital and provider reimbursement, medical malpractice, pharmaceutical products liability litigation, medical data privacy, patients rights, healthcare licensing, antitrust laws regulating physicians and hospitals, managed care and insurance, medical staffing and credentialing, state health care plans for the uninsured, and bioethics, addressing issues such as stem cell research.