Steve has an outstanding reputation in the arena of health care strategic affiliations, mergers, and acquisitions. He has led initiatives involving mergers of nonprofit providers, including community hospitals and academic center-based systems; acquisitions of nonprofits by for-profit companies, including private equity firms; joint ventures and partnerships among for-profit and nonprofit entities; and strategic realignments within academic medical systems among medical schools, academic medical centers and faculty practice plans. Steve has also facilitated the introduction of new and less costly care delivery alternatives, including the integration of retail clinics into pharmacy providers. He has worked on Massachusetts health care reform, helped form the regulatory structure for Dubai Healthcare City, and undertaken several medical travel initiatives. Steve also serves as board chair for a major national charitable patient assistance foundation.
Steve also represents health care providers in developing, monitoring, and restructuring relationships between hospitals and physicians; regulatory and reimbursement matters, including licensure, certification and determination (certificate) of need proceedings, managed care contracting, Medicare reimbursement and appeals, and Medicaid and uncompensated care pool reimbursement; fraud and abuse and Stark Law counseling; general contracting; and, for academic medical centers specifically, clinical research, conflict of interest, relationships with affiliated medical schools, and relationships with federally qualified community health centers.
He also works extensively with the US Department of Defense on matters relating to TRICARE and the operations of the US Family Health Plan program. Since its inception, Steve has served as pro bono legal counsel to the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare, a foundation promoting compassionate care and more effective communications between patients and caregivers.
He has also participated in a number of international health care activities, including structuring the health care regulatory system for the Dubai Healthcare City, where he then served for almost ten years as a member of the licensing board, and representing a number of organizations engaged in the medical travel industry. He is a member of the Healthcare and Life Sciences Committee of the International Bar Association (IBA), where he has most recently served as Committee co-chair. In his capacity as a Committee officer he has organized and/or moderated panels at annual meetings of the IBA on topics that have ranged from comparative international strategies related to regulating drug pricing to public health issues associated with drug-resistant microbes.
