Decades of experience providing legal and lobbying representation to health care organizations have allowed Buchanan to compile a wealth of knowledge in the health care arena. Unlike most traditional lobbying practices, Buchanan's Federal Government Relations team draws upon the experience of Buchanan's top-tier Health Care and Food and Drug (FDA) practices. We not only focus on congressional advocacy, but also in consulting on regulatory matters brought forth by agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Our team is well-versed and fully capable of navigating the Washington landscape of the health care industry on issues such as value-based purchasing, bundled payment, compliance and oversight, comparative effectiveness, tax implications and information technology in health care. On the FDA front, we provide lobbying services for name brand and generic pharmaceuticals, medical devices, foods, supplements and nutraceuticals. In one significant success, we worked to defeat legislation that would have adversely affected the generic veterinary pharmaceutical industry.

Our health care lobbyists have helped such clients as:

• University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)
• The Children’s Institute
• Allergan
• The Walgreen Company
• Academy for Radiology Research
• Gateway Health Plan
• UPMC Health Plan
  
• U.S. Oncology
• Vantage Oncology
  

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Our government relations professionals have worked in Congress and Democratic and Republican administrations, including at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), on a broad range of reimbursement issues as well as major health policy matters. Our director of federal health policy was special assistant to the administrator of CMS. Clients are dependent upon reimbursement streams to support their threefold mission to provide services to patients, educate future health care practitioners and conduct medical research. We guide clients through the detailed process of achieving approval (survey and certification), coverage, payment and compliance.

In addition to handling routine health provider reimbursement issues, we help our clients with:

• Coding and reimbursement matters related to new technology.
• Upper payment limit and disproportionate share programs for academic medical centers and faculty practice plans.
• The rules related to resident and intern supervision and reimbursement for graduate medical education.
• Certification and reimbursement matters related to organ transplant programs.
• A host of reimbursement issues such as provider-based status "incident to" billing, related parties, purchased diagnostic tests, telemedicine and global surgery billing.
• Written compliance plans with hospital policies and procedures that reflect federal and state statutes and regulations.
• Physician self-referral (Stark) rules.
• Non-compliance issues relating to provider citations, immediate jeopardy, etc.
• Electronic records and data collection.
• Not-for-profit provider matters, including tax issues.