Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina has appointed Ken Burgess of the national law firm Baker Donelson to the North Carolina State Board of Examiners for Nursing Home Administrators (NCBENHA). This is the second appointment in as many years for Mr. Burgess by Governor Cooper, as he was appointed to the Governor's Advisory Council on Aging in 2022.
The NCBENHA (the Board) acts to develop, impose, and enforce rules and regulations to establish the standards that must be met by individuals in order to receive and hold a license as a nursing home administrator. The Board has the authority to issue licenses to qualified persons and may suspend, revoke, or refuse to issue a license, or may reprimand or otherwise discipline a licensee upon evidence of noncompliance or infraction.
Mr. Burgess is a health care attorney with more than 35 years of experience advising health care clients, including hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living communities, hospice, and home health providers, as well as ancillary providers, which includes pharmacy, durable medical equipment (DME), and therapy, on a wide variety of regulatory, litigation, compliance, and operational issues. He also advises his clients on Certificate of Need (CON), Medicare/Medicaid enrollment and licensure issues, acute care and long term care operations issues, appeals of quality-of-care issues, and transactional matters.
Mr. Burgess previously served as senior director of Legal Services and Facility Operations of the American Health Care Association (AHCA) and as general counsel of both the North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association (NCHCFA) and the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA), the national assisted living trade association in Washington, D.C. He is a frequent national lecturer and has authored industry manuals, national trade journal magazine articles, and similar training.
A past president of the North Carolina Society of Healthcare Attorneys (twice) and of the North Carolina Bar Association Health Law Council, Mr. Burgess is a member of the American Health Law Association, the National Legal Committee of the American Health Care Association, and the North Carolina Bar Association. He has earned numerous recognitions for his efforts in health law, including being recognized in Chambers USA as a leading practitioner since 2014. He has been named a North Carolina Super Lawyer in Health Care since 2013, and he is listed in The Best Lawyers in America® in Health Care Law and was named the Best Lawyers 2021 Health Law "Lawyer of the Year" in Raleigh. Mr. Burgess has been named a National Law Journal "Health Care Trailblazer," and he is a recipient of the North Carolina Bar Association's Health Law Distinguished Service Award.