Keeping pace with the changing national health care economy.
The Health Care Transactions Group of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney is one of the country’s most active teams of attorneys representing large and small health care providers in mergers, acquisitions and affiliation transactions. Over the past few years, Buchanan has continued its national leadership in health care law, representing health care providers in more than 60 major mergers, acquisitions, affiliations and asset transactions valued at more than $14 billion.
For the past two decades, Buchanan has represented health care providers in major transactions and regulatory issues. The firm has more than 50 health care attorneys located throughout its various offices who are almost exclusively devoted to representing health care providers. A much larger number of our attorneys from practice groups throughout the firm are available to assist in the representation of our health care clients as the need arises.
Antitrust Issues
Federal legislation, such as the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act, prohibits restraint of trade practices such as fixing prices, dividing markets and boycotting health insurers. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also have issued antitrust enforcement policies covering the health care arena addressing the following: hospital mergers, hospital joint ventures involving high technology or other expensive medical equipment, physicians’ provision of information to providers of health services, hospital participation in exchange of price and cost information, joint purchasing arrangements among health care providers and physician network joint ventures.
Buchanan counsels clients with respect to antitrust laws and provides representation in connection with DOJ and FTC inquiries and proceedings. Our lawyers provide corporate counseling, structure transactions to minimize antitrust issues, negotiate with government agencies, establish antitrust compliance programs, prepare licensing and joint technology agreements, and handle both civil and criminal litigation.
Our health care transactional lawyers have achieved great success assisting clients in the navigation of difficult legal issues that potentially threaten the ability to complete a transaction.
Included among the complex issues that we have recent experience resolving are:
- Sales or conversions resulting in a change of a health care facility's status from not-for-profit to for-profit.
- Contentious claims associated with state charitable trust laws and state attorney general intervention.
- Joint venture and joint operating structures including those with physician ownership and control implications.
- Physician practice transactions including acquisitions and divestitures.