With over 25 years of experience representing clients in both the health care and the tax exempt sectors, Jim serves as Chair of Maynard Cooper’s Health Care and Charitable Foundations-Tax Exempt Organizations practice groups. He represents all types of providers and payors to best position them to respond to quickly changing health care regulatory, tax, compliance and other related matters. He also represents a large number of tax exempt entities, both inside and outside the health care industry.

Clients turn to Jim for his respected knowledge, broad-based experience, and active legal and risk management advice in the business of health care. For many of the firm’s clients, Jim serves in an outside General Counsel role to assist them not only with accomplishing their strategic initiatives, but also to serve as a trusted advisor to whom they can readily turn for advice with respect to both legal and business decisions. He has the intuitive insight to effectively and efficiently discern the diverse legal needs of this ever changing industry, and his skills and talents in the field have earned him the preeminent recognition as a Band 1 leading practitioner in Healthcare by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business.

Jim’s comprehensive list of client services includes:

• Working with clients to structure integration, co-management, affiliation, and joint venture arrangements that implicate health care, antitrust and tax concerns
• Dealing with all levels of health care regulatory issues, including the Stark, Anti-Kickback, Civil Monetary Penalties Laws, 340B Drug Pricing Program, and tax law issues
• Implementing alternative payment arrangement and collaborative delivery systems in both commercial and government payor settings, including Medicaid and Medicare bundled payment programs
• Managing all aspects of compliance planning with regard to tax and health care regulation at both the state and federal levels, including financial aid policies and HIPAA and cybersecurity issues
• Assisting clients with internal and external audits and investigations

Through his representation of clients in the health care area, many of which are tax exempt, Jim has developed a significant amount of experience representing charitable and tax exempt organizations of all types and sizes on complex regulatory and business issues, including entity choice, private foundation rules, intermediate sanctions, unrelated business income, and governance.

BAR ADMISSIONS

• State Bar: Alabama

EDUCATION

• University of Alabama School of Law
  • (1989, J.D., Order of the Coif; Hugo L. Black Scholarship; Alabama Law Review, Senior Student Works Editor; Omicron Delta Kappa; American Jurisprudence Award; Corpus Juris Secundum Award; Bench & Bar Legal Honor Society; Dean M. Leigh Harrison Award)
• Yale Divinity School
  • (1984, S.T.M.)
• Yale Divinity School
  • (1983, M. Div.)
• Birmingham-Southern College
  • (1979, B.A., cum laude)

Maynard Cooper & Gale

Maynard Cooper has more than 30 attorneys focused on serving health care clients across the United States. The firm’s Health Care Practice has earned the prestigious Band 1 ranking by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business. Firm clients include multiple health systems and physician practices nationwide, regional care organizations, national bundled payment initiatives, pharmacies and private equity funds targeting investments in a wide variety of health care-related ventures. Along with a robust health care regulatory compliance practice, we have served as primary counsel in a significant number of transactions involving the purchase, sale, merger and/or integration of hospitals, hospital systems, physician practices, hospices, assisted living and skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies and many other health care companies and providers. Maynard Cooper also has extensive experience representing health care clients in connection with a broad range of government investigations, enforcement actions, internal investigations, criminal prosecutions, and private litigation.

Our lawyers’ experience enables us to tailor creative strategies for clients across the healthcare spectrum, including advising clients regarding alternative payment and clinical integration models, the 340B Drug Pricing Program, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), and multi-diagnostic facilities. The firm’s health care group routinely advises clients regarding health care IT, distribution and supply chain, health care financing and investment, and medical office development and construction transactions. Representation of our clients extends to other areas of the firm’s expertise, including governmental affairs, taxation (including 501(c)(3) entities), employee benefits, labor and employment, real estate, general litigation, corporate governance and securities matters. As the listings below highlight, Maynard Cooper’s health care lawyers possess the judgment, skill and experience to provide practical, results-oriented advice and counsel to health care constituents facing the broad continuum of legal challenges and issues that may arise in today’s ever-changing and constantly evolving health care environment.

Maynard Cooper represents all types of health care providers, including the following:

• Large and small health systems
• Hospitals
• Physician and physician group practices
• Nursing homes
• Hospices
• Home health agencies
• Reference laboratories
• Diagnostic imaging and joint venture entities
• Clinically integrated networks
• Pharmacies

The firm’s health care attorneys regularly advise clients regarding:

• Integration, co-management and similar joint transactions/combinations between physician practice groups and hospitals/health systems
• Joint ventures
• Fraud and abuse (including the Health Care Fraud and Anti-Kickback Statutes)
• Stark Law and Exclusion Provisions
• False Claims Act/Whistleblower claims
• Government investigations and enforcement actions
• Medical staff bylaws and credentialing matters
• Professional services and employment agreements with physicians
• Medicare reimbursement issues
• 340B Drug Pricing Program participation and compliance, including responding to HRSA audits
• Management services arrangements
• HIPAA Privacy/Security
• Corporate structure and governance issues
• State licensure and other regulatory issues
• Joint Commission
• Antitrust issues
• FDA Matters
• Technology licensing matters
• Executive compensation and employee benefits
• Asset purchases and other significant transactions
• Tax-exempt bond financings
• Hospital and physician group management and organization
• Audit services with regard to the Medicare Integrity Program
• Development and maintenance of corporate compliance programs
• Internal and external audits and investigations
• Certificate of Need requirements and related litigation