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We are pleased to announce that our Healthcare Group received a national Band 1 ranking for the eleventh year in a row in the 2020 edition of Chambers USA. After more than a decade at the top, we are once again the only one to rank Band 1 nationally. The Health team also earned Band 1 state-level rankings for its healthcare practices in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington, DC. Additionally, the team also earned the national Spotlight Table ranking for the Privacy and Data Security: Healthcare category. In addition, nearly half of the Healthcare Industry Advisory group partners were individually ranked.
International law firm McDermott Will & Emery was named 2019 “Healthcare Team of the Year” by Chambers USA at its awards ceremony celebrating legal excellence. This is the fourth time McDermott has received the honor – more than any other law firm in the awards’ history.
The “Healthcare Team of the Year” award comes on the heels of McDermott’s industry-leading health practice garnering a national Band 1 ranking in the Healthcare category of the 2019 edition of Chambers USA for the 10th consecutive year – also the only firm to hold that distinction.
“Our team is dedicated to helping health care companies push the boundaries of what it means to be innovative,” said McDermott Will & Emery Partner and International Head of McDermott’s Health Industry Advisory Group, Eric Zimmerman. “Receiving Chambers’ “Healthcare Team of the Year” award is a powerful testament to that work and to our passion for contributing to the health care and the legal industries at the highest levels. Thank you to our clients and to Chambers for recognizing McDermott again this year.”
McDermott Will & Emery is the nation’s leading healthcare law firm. The Health Industry Advisory group is the only health practice to receive top national rankings from U.S. News – Best Lawyers “Best Law Firms,” Chambers USA, The Legal 500 US and Law360. The practice was also recognized by Chambers as “Health Team of the Year” in 2010, 2013 and 2017. McDermott has held the top spot in PitchBook’s League Tables as the most active firm for healthcare private equity since 2017.
About Chambers USA
Chambers USA covers all the states in the U.S. Law firms that have a national presence are also ranked in Nationwide tables (which focus on those firms that are the country’s best in their respective areas of practice). Chambers USA rankings and editorial commentary are based on independent research, and interviews with clients and other purchasers of legal services. Chambers & Partners is one of the premier directories for legal services and in a recent survey of 20,000 in-house counsel over half reported that their directory of choice when reviewing law firms and individual lawyers is Chambers & Partners.
We are pleased to share that Chambers USA has once again named McDermott Health the only firm to receive a Band 1 national ranking in health care. This year’s Band 1 placement marks 10 consecutive years of securing a top national ranking in this prestigious law firm directory, and the ninth year that we have held this position exclusively. The Health team also garnered Band 1 state-level rankings in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington, DC—cities and states where we have substantial health law teams—and 29 McDermott health lawyers were ranked individually.
The October issue of the journal Science features a series of short articles highlighting a database containing a list of more than 18,000 scientific papers and conference abstracts that have been retracted over the past several decades. An analysis of the database shows that nearly 60 percent of retraction notices mentioned fraud or other kinds of misconduct (the balance of which were retracted because of errors, problems with reproducibility and other issues). The Science article, as well as a link to the searchable database, can be accessed here. Not only does research misconduct have significant potential for reputational harm–potentially career ending for the investigator, with ripple effects for the institution–but as described below, when the associated research is federally funded, such misconduct could have significant legal (and liability) implications.
US health care organizations are used to warnings about the potential for exposure under the federal False Claims Act (FCA) resulting from improper claims submitted to federal payors such as Medicare and Medicaid. Less attention has been paid to the potential for FCA liability resulting from research non-compliance. Recipients of federal grant funding are subject to a variety of complex rules (e.g., the National Institute of Health (NIH) Grants Policy Statement), as well as the terms and conditions of the Notices of Award. Just as compliance with Medicare rules can lead to questions about potential FCA exposure for Medicare payments, compliance with federal grant funding rules can lead to the same questions for grant funds.
For example, grant recipients should consider the FCA implications of research misconduct. “Research misconduct” is defined by the Public Health Services’ (PHS’s) final rule, effective June 2005 (the Rule), as the “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.” 42 C.F.R. § 93.103. The Rule confers upon an organization an affirmative duty to protect PHS funds from misuse by ensuring the integrity of all PHS supported work, and primary responsibility for responding to and reporting allegations of research misconduct. 42 C.F.R. § 93.100(b). The Rule applies to grant funding from a variety of federal agencies, including the Food & Drug Administration, NIH, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, to name a few.
At a time when health care organizations are facing greater financial and reputational costs than ever before, more than 150 health care industry leaders, legal and compliance executives, and investors gathered for McDermott’s Health Care Litigation, Compliance & Investigations Forum at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago to discuss strategies for proactively managing and effectively responding to compliance risks, investigations and litigation.
The event covered a wide range of issues, including fraud and abuse (such as False Claims Act and Stark Law matters), governance, cybersecurity, antitrust, white-collar, intellectual property, products liability and tax-exemption disputes. The event also featured a keynote address by Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2014 to 2017, on the foundations of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the ramifications of the elimination of the individual mandate and the ACA’s prospects going forward.
If your organization needs support in current litigation or wants to ensure best practices to help avoid one, we’re here to help.
Below are key insights from the sessions:
Every Day’s Adventure: How Leading GCs Are Thinking about Compliance and Enforcement
On August 20, 2018, U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio granted summary judgment in favor of The Brink’s Company (Brink’s), concluding that Regional Federal Reserve Banks (RFRB) are not “the Government” for purposes of the federal False Claims Act (FCA).
The relator’s qui tam action was premised on an alleged penny-swapping scheme. Brink’s and other armored carriers regularly enter Coin Terminal Agreements (CTA) with RFRBs to transport and store coins. Pursuant to one such CTA, Brink’s received, weighed, tracked and stored the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s coins and provided similar services to other customers. Although Brink’s maintained electronic records of the coins in its inventory, it did not segregate physical coins by customer.
The relator, a former Brink’s employee, alleged Brink’s violated its contract with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and defrauded the government by engaging in a penny-swapping scheme with Jackson Metals. In essence, the relator alleged that Brink’s entered into a secret agreement, allowing Jackson Metals to purchase commingled pennies, cull out the pennies minted prior to 1982, and replace them with pennies minted after 1982. Pennies minted prior to 1982 have a higher metallurgical value because of their copper content. The replacement pennies are made from lower-value zinc. The relator argued that this penny-swapping scheme deprived the government of the value of the copper.
In moving for summary judgment, Brink’s argued, in part, that the FCA did not apply because RFRBs are not “the Government” under the FCA. The court agreed. First, Judge Marbley examined the structure of the Federal Reserve. He contrasted the Board of Governors with RFRBs, noting that RFRBs “are ‘private corporations whose stock is owned by the member commercial banks within their district.’” (more…)
On March 13, 2018, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma dismissed U.S. ex rel. Montalvo v. Native American Servs. Corp. In this case, the relators alleged that the defendants performed substandard work at a US Army ammunition plant. Specifically, the relators alleged that the defendant oversaw a construction project in which a subcontractor was ordered to pour concrete into areas that contained tree roots and stems, which allegedly damaged the quality of the concrete.
At summary judgment, the only evidence offered by the relator was an affidavit setting forth the facts above. The only disputed fact was whether the defendant knew about the tree roots and stems when ordering the subcontractor to pour the concrete. Regardless of that factual dispute, the court concluded that the plaintiff had failed to offer sufficient evidence that the defendant had knowingly caused the submission of false claims and granted summary judgment in the defendant’s favor. (more…)
Attendees at the Health Care Compliance Association’s Health Care Enforcement Compliance Institute are reporting that, Michael Granston, Director, Civil Frauds, Commercial Litigation Branch of the Civil Division of the US Department of Justice (DOJ), announced a significant shift in policy for the DOJ in dealing with False Claims Act (FCA) complaints that are deemed “frivolous” on the merits. Acknowledging the burden on the resources of all parties caused by the litigation of frivolous FCA matters, Mr. Granston reportedly stated that, going forward, once it has determined that the allegations of a qui tam complaint lack merit, the DOJ will more aggressively exercise its discretion to move to dismiss the case rather than leave to the qui tam relator in every instance the option of whether to continue the litigation. Senior management—including boards of directors, in-house corporate counsel and chief compliance officers—should take notice of this new, potentially meaningful, opportunity to extricate FCA defendants from burdensome qui tams pursued by relators purely for settlement value. (more…)
Earlier this year, DOJ and OIG independently issued guides focused on evaluating compliance program effectiveness. The guides approach the topic from different perspectives but cover overlapping themes and work well in tandem. We reviewed the guides and compiled the reference tool to aid organization executives and boards of directors to measure compliance program effectiveness and, in turn, wisely invest resources.
Read the full article “Breaking Down the 2017 DOJ and OIG Compliance Guides.”
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