Attorney for Medical Practices in New York City

A medical practice is a small business operating inside a regulatory structure built for something else. Ownership is restricted to licensed professionals. Referral relationships that would be ordinary marketing in any other industry are federal crimes. Revenue arrives from payors who can take it back two years later. And the practice's most valuable asset, the patient relationship, comes with record-keeping obligations that outlast the practice itself.

The Law Offices of Albert Goodwin represents physicians, dentists, and other licensed practitioners in New York City on the business and legal side of practicing: forming and structuring the practice, the agreements among the owners, the contracts with employed physicians and payors, audits and recoupments, compliance, and the eventual sale or wind-down.

What We Handle

Practice Structure and the Corporate Practice of Medicine

New York restricts who may own a medical practice, and the arrangements that non-physician investors and management companies use to work within those limits are heavily scrutinized. See practice formation and the corporate practice of medicine.

Physician Employment Agreements

Compensation formulas, restrictive covenants, malpractice tail coverage, and termination provisions, from either side of the table. See physician employment contracts.

Disputes Among Owners

Partner separations in a professional entity involve valuation, patient records, referral relationships, and licensure questions that ordinary business divorces do not. See medical practice partner disputes.

Payor Audits and Recoupment

Extrapolated overpayment demands, prepayment review, network termination, and the appeal deadlines that decide whether the money comes back. See payor audits and recoupment.

Stark, Anti-Kickback, and Fee Splitting

The three overlapping regimes, federal and New York, that govern referral relationships, compensation arrangements, and arrangements with vendors. See Stark, kickbacks, and fee splitting.

HIPAA and Patient Records

Breach response, record access requests, retention obligations, and what happens to records when a practice closes or is sold. See HIPAA and patient records.

Selling the Practice

Sales to hospitals, to private equity backed platforms, and to other physicians each raise different structural problems. See selling a medical practice.

The Business Problems Underneath the Clinical Ones

Most of what threatens a practice is not a malpractice claim. It is the ordinary commercial exposure that every business has, arriving in a setting where the margins are thinner and the regulatory overlay makes each problem harder to solve:

• The lease. Medical space carries build-out requirements, ventilation and plumbing needs, ADA obligations, and use restrictions. A practice that cannot assign its lease cannot be sold, and a good guy guaranty signed by the founding physician is a personal obligation. See commercial leases and personal guaranties.
• Equipment financing. Imaging and laser equipment is financed on terms that outlast its useful life, frequently with personal guaranties and automatic renewals. See equipment and loan defaults.
• Vendors. Billing companies, electronic health record vendors, staffing agencies, and management companies, each with contracts that allocate risk to the practice. See vendor contract negotiation.
• Employment. Front desk and clinical staff generate the same wage and hour, discrimination, and classification exposure as any employer, plus the added problem that a disgruntled employee has access to protected health information. See wage and hour claims.
• Collections. Patient balances, and receivables from payors that stop paying. See commercial collections.

Asset Protection for Physicians

Practitioners in high-exposure specialties frequently ask how to insulate personal assets from a claim that exceeds coverage. The answer involves entity structure, insurance limits, exemption planning, and timing, and it is worth noting at the outset that transfers made after a claim arises are a different and much worse proposition than planning done in advance. See asset protection for doctors and asset protection generally.

A Note on Professional Discipline

Complaints to the Office of Professional Medical Conduct, and licensure matters before the Department of Health and the Office of the Professions, are a distinct area from the business representation described on these pages. They frequently arrive alongside a business dispute, because a departing partner, a terminated employee, or an audited payor may generate one. Where a matter has both dimensions, they should be coordinated rather than handled in isolation, since positions taken in one can be used in the other.

Who We Work With

Solo practitioners and small groups, multi-specialty practices, dental and optometry practices, physical therapy and behavioral health providers, ambulatory surgery centers, diagnostic imaging operations, and the management companies and investors who contract with them. We also represent physicians individually in disputes with the practices that employ them.

You can contact us by phone at 212-233-1233 or by email at [email protected].