Health Care

This session will provide insight into the healthcare dealmakers’ perspective across the health services spectrum. We’ll hear from strategic buyers, private equity and institutional capital regarding current deal metrics, capitalization requirements, various industry multiples and the impact the elections may have on deal making.

This panel will discuss and summarize the challenges the US is facing in the behavioral market industry. Some topics will include addiction, mental health and special focus will be opioid crisis. The panel will break down the why there is an epidemic and what providers are doing in order to address this national crisis. Finally, the panel will discuss the Opioid crisis and discuss what led up to the recent chapter 11 filings.

Hear first-hand experience on who to survive a cyberattack, one of the many challenges facing healthcare providers today.

Consumers are utilizing retail clinics, urgent care centers, ambulatory surgery centers, concierge services and freestanding ERs to get medical care when and where they want it. The healthcare marketplace is forcing providers to rethink their business models beyond the four walls of traditional healthcare facilities. The new reality is that healthcare is taking on a consumer-centric, technology-enabled retail model, in the name of improving outcomes and lowering costs. This panel will explore how to create a Consumer Brand Experience in today's evolving healthcare marketplace. Every aspect of your organization from your stories, your online presence, mobile solutions, services and physical environment, should be an extension of your brand and what you do remarkably well. For healthcare providers, a well-defined Consumer Brand Experience means bringing your brand promise to life consistently, across every location where you market and provide services to your consumers.

The US healthcare system is consolidating at an increasing pace. Healthcare systems tout the benefits of consolidation in the form of cost savings and other operational efficiencies. But consolidation also has its costs: independent providers are being disrupted by larger systems, the larger systems themselves face higher risks, and the consumer may not always benefit. This panel will explore the pros and cons of consolidation from the perspective of consolidated systems themselves, providers that choose to remain independent, and the healthcare consumer.

This session will focus on the views of patient care ombudsmen (PCOs) on the quality-of-care issues they routinely confront in chapter 11 cases; how debtor, secured lender and committee professionals react to either support or suppress the findings made by health care experts; in-depth analysis of what constitutes the proper protocol to evaluate quality of care; the differences in the approaches made to the PCO role by a doctor, nurse and/or health care administrator; whether PCOs universally should be doctors, nurses or health care administrators and not lawyers posing as health care professionals; the obligations of PCOs to tell quality-of-care stories without concern for the potential economic impact on an exit strategy in the bankruptcy (i.e., sale, potential loss of license, etc.); the impact of transfer trauma on a change of control arising from a potential sale of the health care business; how the PCO is differentiated from a state long-term-care ombudsman, Medicare and Medicaid surveyors; and the PCO’s role as patient advocate in bankruptcy cases.

Experienced practitioners are typically able to litigate the issues that arise in most chapter 11 cases in a similar manner, regardless of the industry of a particular debtor. In the health care context, however, the identities of the litigants are often different (government agencies, patient care ombudsmen, etc.), and more importantly, those litigants’ respective motivations may be vastly different than in a "typical" chapter 11 case. Economic considerations, the driver of most chapter 11 outcomes, are often superseded in a health care case by a party’s perceived public policy or reputational concerns. This panel will discuss these differences and provide practical suggestions, based on their extensive experience, as to how attorneys and financial advisors can navigate these issues and reach a successful outcome for all stakeholders.

There have been a number of recent bankruptcy filings by large and high profile healthcare providers, such as the filings of Verity Health System of California, Inc., in Los Angeles (the second largest hospital bankruptcy case in American history), Hospital Acquisition LLC and 25 related debtors d/b/a Promise Health and American Academic Health System (Hahnemann University Hospital and St. Christopher Hospital in Philadelphia) in Wilmington, Delaware, and Astria Health in Yakima, Washington. Additionally, EmpowerHMS owned or helped manage a rural hospital empire that encompassed 18 facilities across eight states. After funding from a controversial lab-billing venture dried up, 12 of the hospitals entered bankruptcy and eight closed their doors. There has also been a steady stream of lower profile cases, including Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park, Illinois, Penobscot Valley Hospital in Maine, and Springfield Hospital, Inc., in Vermont, and it appears that there are more filings in store. The webinar will discuss (i) the reasons for this growing trend of healthcare cases, (ii) the unique challenges in those cases, which involve not only the typical payment of creditor claims, but also the care of patients, (iii) the particular issues that arise uniquely in this class of cases, including jurisdiction over the Medicare and Medicaid Programs, treatment of provider agreements, the intersection of nonprofit law and bankruptcy law, and treatment of medical malpractice claims, and (iv) whether this trend of healthcare filings will continue.

The panelists will discuss upstart pharma bankruptcies, increased filings by care facilities and hospitals, the financial condition of rural hospitals, consumer medical bills, and medical records in bankruptcies.