Neal Gerber Eisenberg’s health care and life sciences practice guides clients past the tightly woven net of regulations that is unique to their industry and provides first-rate legal counsel that is attune with health care’s constantly shifting legal, regulatory, financial and political landscape.
We partner with companies—including those from the medical care, life sciences, pharmaceutical, medical devices and diagnostic sectors—to advance their business interests through counseling, litigation and transactional work. Our broad client base includes hospital systems and academic medical centers; physician groups; health industry associations; long-term care, hospice and home health providers; and professional practitioners.
In addition, our attorneys have carved a particular niche in the representation of life science clients on pre-clinical and clinical research and product development. In connection with such counsel, we are well-versed on regulatory compliance issues involving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Office of Human Research Protection (OHRP), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
In 2010, U.S. News-Best Lawyers’ “Best Law Firms” survey ranked the firm’s health care and life sciences as a leading health care practice in Chicago.
Transactions, Compliance & Counseling
Our attorneys manage and efficiently close health care transactions of all types, including acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures and affiliations, vendor and provider contracting agreements, licensing arrangements, traditional and tax-exempt financings and restructurings. Our clients in this area are a diverse mix of private equity firms, start-ups, not-for-profits and privately held and publicly traded companies.
Specifically, we have experience in the acquisition and sales of HMOs and hospitals and in structuring multihospital systems and creating academic medical center relationships with faculty practice plans. We have formed partnerships between health insurance companies and hospital systems and joint ventures involving health insurance plans. The firm’s health care attorneys also provide general counsel to health care clients to ensure compliance with federal and state regulatory requirements. We advise our clients on antitrust, fraud and abuse, Stark, HIPAA, ERISA, health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid and related statutory and regulatory compliance.
Clinical Research & Life Sciences
Our health care practice represents clients from the life sciences industry at every stage of bringing new products to market, from discovery and development onward through clinical trials, regulatory approval, labeling and marketing. The firm’s clients in this area include pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices and diagnostic companies; public and private health care institutions; research sites and academic medical centers; biological specimen repositories; contract research organizations; affiliated and independent institutional review boards; and principal investigators.
We have assisted in the design, implementation and defense of thousands of clinical research programs and provided counsel on associated product development. Particularly, the group serves as lead counsel to several multihospital, nationwide clinical research networks conducting industry-sponsored and NIH-funded clinical studies.