Areas of Practice

Health Law

Conceptual Approach

Our mission is to offer comprehensive legal services to health care providers, supporting clients in their efforts to (i) prevent legal problems, (ii) defend themselves well when problems emerge, (iii) enhance their strategic positions in a competitive environment, and (iv) deliver quality services.

As a firm specializing in legal counseling for health care providers, Johnson, Aceto, Bonner & Prager, LLP offers its clients:

Responsive Services. We personalize our services to meet our client’s needs. We return phone calls promptly and are readily accessible to our clients through pagers, fax, e-mail, and voice mail. We travel regularly to our client sites for consultations. Not only does this facilitate legal work for our clients, but it allows us to gain a better understanding of our client’s needs and operations.

Prompt Completion of Work. Each client is important to us. You will have direct contact with the attorneys working on your project. We complete our assignments on a timely basis and with appropriate resources for the job.

Expert and Cost-Efficient Services. By concentrating in areas of law affecting health care providers, we bring to bear experience and problem-solving skills that focus upon your needs. We know how to solve a client’s problem without hours of expensive research. Our principal attorneys have years of experience -- collectively more than 50 years -- in serving health care professionals and organizations.

Efficient Use of Technology. To ensure our efficiency, we use the latest in law office technology, including state-of-the-art on-line research products. Our office is fully automated and networked. This allows us to produce a high quality work product with fewer staff, and therefore, pass overhead savings on to you, the client.

 Summary of Practice Area

Today’s health care industry is driven by regulatory and competitive market forces --- health care providers must properly position themselves in an increasingly complex environment. As a result, it is no longer a luxury, but rather a strategic imperative to have the proper legal services and make every move count. Johnson, Aceto, Bonner & Prager, LLP is one of the area’s premier health care specialty law firms, offers an extensive understanding of the health care industry and is dedicated to meeting the legal needs of its health care clients.

Few law firms have such depth of experience in health care law, allowing them to provide high quality counsel to providers in diverse fields of law. Our health law department has represented clients and succeeded in litigation and transactional work to favorably position providers for long-term stability and growth. Our experience helps providers to build from the ground up, the infrastructure that will sustain long-term growth, prevent future legal problems, and weather the rapidly occurring changes in health care regulations.

Our clients include hospitals, home health agencies, clinical practices, community mental health centers, physicians and other practitioners, and health care trade associations. The firm offers representation in the following areas:

• General litigation on behalf of health care providers including regulatory proceedings initiated by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, fraud and abuse prosecutions, third-party reimbursement and recoupment proceedings, contract disputes, and employment matters
  
  
• Medicare/ Medicaid audits and investigations of providers
  
  
• Third-party payor reimbursement disputes
  
  
• Peer review & credentialing/ professional licensing matters
  
  
• Compliance Activities
  
  
• Certification and accreditation matters for providers
  
  
• Negotiation of contracts and disputes with managed care and other health insurance plans
  
  
• Business law
  
  
• Employment law
  
  
• Clinical Risk Management

Peer Review Disputes and Credentialing/ Professional Licensing Matters

The past ten years have seen a dramatic increase in credentialing, de-credentialing, and peer review activities. De-credentialing and peer review actions often appear on the heels of Medicare/Medicaid sanctions and boards of registration or medical examiner discipline. Elimination from one health plan, hospital, or practice can have a domino effect resulting in exclusion from all other plans and institutions. It is an ever increasing slippery slope. Gaining a foothold requires experience and knowledgeable counsel. Johnson, Aceto, Bonner & Prager, LLP has handled credentialing and peer review actions for physicians and other health care providers with outstanding results. Our organized method of presentation, utilizing the latest technology, has proved beneficial in helping peers to better understand the actions and thought process of the provider under fire. Brevity, clarity and a well-developed strategy are essential to a successful result.

Certification and Accreditation

We will help you obtain and maintain your Medicare certification and/or JCAHO accreditation as well as contest proposed revocations, denials, deficiencies upon initial survey or resurvey. We will assist you in developing an acceptable plan of correction for cited deficiencies. We will also provide ongoing advice concerning your compliance with certification and accreditation standards.

Compliance Activities

The federal Office of Inspector General has issued compliance guidelines for a number of industries, including hospitals, clinical laboratories, home health agencies, physician practices and billing companies. Having an effective corporate compliance plan in place can make the difference between a criminal prosecution and a civil resolution. The attorneys at Johnson, Aceto, Bonner & Prager, LLP will help you develop and implement workable Medicare/Medicaid compliance programs for health care providers such as community mental health providers, group medical practices, and home health agencies that meet all the requirements outlined by the Office of the Inspector General in a cost-effective manner. In addition, Johnson & Aceto, LLP is experienced in conducting effective training and on-going compliance activities.

Employment law

As a provider, your employees are your most valuable asset. Poor hiring, firing and human resource management practices directly impact every aspect of your business. In addition to complying with state and federal laws governing benefits, wage and hour discrimination issues, you must protect the safety, security, and trust of your clients. Johnson, Aceto, Bonner & Prager, LLP possesses the experience to counsel and advocate for you in all aspects of the employment relationship, including:

Pre-hire. We will counsel you regarding drug screening, medical examinations, background reference checks, criminal histories, driving records and proper interview questions and techniques to help you hire the most qualified applicants.

Employee Relations, Discipline and Termination. Carefully prepared employment, confidentiality and non-compete agreements will help preserve your investment in your key staff members. We will help you to set up policies, procedures and training regarding workplace discrimination and harassment, family and medical leave, accommodation to disabilities, and all other aspects of the employment relationship, including affirmative action, discipline, termination lay off and defense of related claims.

Wage and Hours; Workers’ Compensation. We will assist you to comply with wage and hour and workers’ compensation laws to avoid costly claims and sanctions.

Monitoring the Employee/Client Relationship. Your employees most often have direct, unsupervised contact with your clients. Through implementation of risk management policies, we will help you avoid abuses of the trust relationship including, e.g. employee theft, employee harassment of patients, and patient harassment of the employee.

Clinical Risk Management

You need to ensure that you deliver high quality patient care while discharging your legal responsibilities. Johnson, Aceto, Bonner & Prager, LLP can help prevent legal liability for certain sensitive clinical management decisions. Often with a brief consultation, we can guide you in the right direction and you will rest assured that your patient care services comply with the complex array of laws that apply to your operations.

Patient Abandonment/Premature Discharges. In this era of managed care and restrictions on Medicare/Medicaid coverage, we can help you address potential or actual patient complaints alleging premature discharge or patient abandonment. This is critical to maintaining your certification status and avoiding tort liability.

Confidentiality/Release of Clinical Records. We can assist you in ensuring the integrity of confidential clinical information by reviewing your agency policies and consulting with you on the release of clinical information in difficult cases.

Reporting Patient Abuse. When you are concerned that caretakers or families may be abusing patients, we can help you report abuse to the appropriate regulatory agencies. We can also help you develop a risk management program designed to detect abuse and prevent liability on the part of your employees for incidents for which they are not responsible.

Refusal of Treatment. When patients refuse treatment critical to their well-being, life, safety or ability to function independently, we can help you assess whether such decisions are made competently and, if not, how you can bring resources to bear to support your patient and prevent liability.

Patient Competency/Health Proxies and Guardianships. If you determine a patient is not competent to make health care decisions, we can assist you in identifying an appropriate substitute decision-maker with the legal authority to make decisions.