Academic Medical Centers

• 340B Drug Pricing Program
• Accreditation, faculty, and residency issues
• Affiliations, alignments and other joint venture and strategic transactions
• Antitrust matters (including development of Clinically Integrated Networks)
• Clinical research
• Data protection, privacy and cybersecurity
• Education law and Title IX compliance (including defense of GME-related employment litigation)
• EMTALA compliance
• Faculty practice plans
• Fraud and abuse counseling (including Anti-Kickback Statute, Stark Law, CMP and OIG/CMS self-disclosure issues)
• Funds flow within AMC components
• Governance models
• Government relations and public policy
• Graduate medical education payments
• HIPAA
• Immigration
• Labor & employment
• Medical staff issues
• Physician practice acquisitions
• Reimbursement and payment Issues (including emerging payment models and teaching physician billing)
• Risk management and professional liability defense
• Tax exemption
• Technology transfer
• Telehealth and digital health

Our team of professionals focused on serving academic medical center clients have developed relevant expertise by serving in various leadership positions. One shareholder served as chair of the American Health Law Association’s Academic Medical Centers and Teaching Hospitals Practice Group, another worked at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) prior to joining Baker Donelson, and several of our attorneys have written articles and spoken extensively on graduate medical education issues and other related AMC topics.

Graduate Medical Education Payments

The Medicare program is the largest source of federal funding for resident education and teaching hospital missions, with aggregate estimated payments to teaching hospitals exceeding $12 billion per year. Navigating the complex regulations and requirements pertaining to Medicare GME payments is critical when providers and institutions of higher education partner to establish, operate, or expand residency programs. 

Baker Donelson advises hospitals, academic medical centers, health systems, medical schools and dental schools on Medicare GME payment rules and regulations. Our team counsels hospitals starting new teaching programs, including how to navigate the rules for establishing their GME caps and per resident amounts (PRAs). We advise hospitals on the rules governing the transfer of temporary GME cap slots for displaced residents and the application for Section 5506 redistributions from closed hospitals.

Additional areas of GME experience include the Medicare rules governing the application of the three-year rolling average and intern and resident-to-bed (IRB) ratio, the community support and redistribution principle, and the regulatory requirements pertaining to nursing and allied health programs, and rural training tracks programs. We regularly represent providers in appeals involving GME, IME, and nursing and allied health payment issues before the Provider Reimbursement Review Board (PRRB) and in the federal courts.