Throughout his career, Mr. Burks has served as lead counsel to buyers, sellers, and joint venture partners in transactions involving hundreds of hospitals and other health care businesses, including acquisitions and divestitures of multi‑billion‑dollar health care systems. His experience spans the full spectrum of transaction complexity – from single‑asset acquisitions to large, multi-entity system transactions requiring intricate governance, regulatory, and financing structures. He is particularly known for his ability to coordinate and drive transactions involving numerous stakeholders, competing interests, and compressed timelines.
Mr. Burks has extensive experience structuring and negotiating complex joint ventures, including multiparty arrangements among hospitals, health systems, physicians, private investors, and other strategic participants. These ventures frequently involve sophisticated governance frameworks, shared control mechanisms, capital contribution arrangements, and long term alignment of clinical and financial objectives. In addition to U.S.‑based transactions, he has represented clients in cross‑border mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures, advising on international deal structuring and execution in the global health care marketplace.
A significant aspect of Mr. Burks' practice involves serving as outside general counsel to health systems and hospitals. In this role, he acts as a trusted, long term advisor to boards, executive leadership, and senior management on a wide range of strategic, governance, regulatory, and operational matters. His outside general counsel work frequently includes counseling on enterprise‑level transactions, physician alignment strategies, compliance and risk management issues, governance structures, executive matters, and mission‑critical business decisions, providing clients with continuity, institutional knowledge, and practical judgment typically associated with in‑house counsel.
Before returning to private practice, Mr. Burks held senior in‑house leadership roles that uniquely inform his transactional approach. He previously served as vice president, secretary, and general counsel of Quorum Health Group, Inc., where he was a member of the company's five‑person executive management team responsible for corporate strategy and policy. In that role, he led the legal function for a national hospital company, advising the board of directors and senior management, managing outside counsel, and overseeing the successful resolution of major False Claims Act litigation while simultaneously directing the company's acquisition by Triad Hospitals, Inc.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Burks spent eleven years with Hospital Corporation of America, concluding his tenure as vice president and assistant general counsel. There, he served as lead counsel on mergers, acquisitions, sales, and joint ventures across a broad range of health care businesses and managed a dedicated mergers and acquisitions legal team. His in‑house experience allows him to deliver pragmatic, business‑oriented advice grounded in an executive‑level understanding of risk, valuation, governance, and operational realities.
In addition to M&A and joint ventures, Mr. Burks has advised clients on complex financings and related transactions, including secured and unsecured credit facilities, debt and equity tender offers, public and private securities offerings, venture capital investments, real estate transactions, internal investigations, and executive employment and severance arrangements.
Mr. Burks is the co-chair of Baker Donelson's Health Care Transactions Team and the former co‑chair of Baker Donelson's Health Law Group. He is consistently recognized for his leadership in health care transactions. He has been listed in Chambers USA as a leading Tennessee health care lawyer since 2008 and in The Best Lawyers in America® for Corporate Law, Health Care Law, and Mergers and Acquisitions Law for more than a decade. He has also been named a Thomson Reuters Stand‑out Lawyer and recognized by numerous industry publications for excellence in health care transactions.