McDermott Will & Schulte, a global law firm

Advises on managed care regulation across commercial, Medicare Advantage, Part D, and Medicaid programs

Represents companies across the drug supply chain to negotiate complex and innovative commercial partnerships

Structures joint ventures and value-based reimbursement arrangements between health plans and providers

Leads managed care M&A and secures regulatory approvals from CMS and state agencies

Represents clients in risk adjustment investigations, qui tam actions, and coverage litigation

Kate McDonald represents clients across the healthcare industry on complex regulatory matters and high-stakes mergers and acquisitions, affiliations and other investments. She delivers strategic advice on federal and state laws applicable to health insurers and HMOs, including the downstream implications for their provider organizations and vendors, as well as the reimbursement landscape of federal healthcare programs.

Kate’s clients rely on her extensive experience navigating the Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D and Medicaid managed care programs. She partners with health plans, provider organizations, technology start-ups, private equity funds and retailers to benchmark risks, solve regulatory challenges and structure transactions, particularly those that involve federal and state healthcare programs. As payors and providers continue to realign in today’s market, Kate offers nuanced insights into the unique obstacles and opportunities facing companies at the intersection of these two worlds. She helps innovative companies navigate state risk-bearing regulations, drafts and negotiates agreements with complex reimbursement structures and regulatory implications, and advises healthcare companies and private equity funds on investments in highly regulated segments of the healthcare market.

Kate’s healthcare regulatory experience also includes deep insights into DC certificate of need (CON) laws. She helps providers obtain CON approval for the introduction and expansion of healthcare services, changes in ownership, capital expenditures, and closure of healthcare services or facilities in Washington, DC.

Kate is a contributing author to Regulation of Medicare Part D Plans (Thomson Reuters, 2019 edition) and Thomson Reuters Health Law Handbook (2017 edition). She speaks regularly at healthcare industry events, including the Wall Street Journal Health Forum, American Health Lawyers Association Institute for Health Plan Counsel, Blue Cross Blue Shield National Summit, Health Care Compliance Association Managed Care Compliance Conference, and Medicaid Managed Care Congress. Kate was the first recipient of the McDermott Will & Emery Client Service Award (2019).

Matt Perreault advises healthcare organizations on complex transactions, sophisticated managed care arrangements, and related fraud and abuse matters. He represents accountable care organizations (ACOs); diverse provider, risk intermediary, care management and provider enablement organizations; health plans; and investors on a wide range of value-based care agreements, including shared savings, bundled payments, downside risk and capitation arrangements.

Matt serves as a strategic advisor to ACOs, independent physician associates (IPAs), managed care networks, integrated delivery networks and other healthcare providers, including hospitals and health systems, specialty providers, physician practices and innovative primary care organizations, on acquisitions, affiliations, reorganizations and other transactions. He also provides guidance on regulatory and fraud and abuse matters related to these transactions and contractual arrangements, including the physician self-referral law (Stark Law), the Anti-Kickback Statute, and general healthcare law and compliance matters.

Prior to joining McDermott Will & Schulte, Matt was deputy general counsel of a large national private health system, where he served as the lead lawyer for its managed care network, multi-specialty physician practice and hospital physician contracting throughout the system.

Mimi Alexandre counsels clients across the healthcare industry with a particular focus on entities in the managed care arena. Mimi routinely works with health plans, health maintenance organizations, private equity funds and vendors, helping them navigate complex regulatory schemes and facilitate business objectives.

Mimi has deep familiarity with and significant experience in government programs, including Medicare Advantage and Part D. She leverages this knowledge to provide risk assessments and practical advice. Mimi also routinely negotiates complex agreements with providers, pharmaceutical benefits managers and risk adjustment vendors. As the managed care landscape shifts, Mimi has gained significant experience evaluating the need for risk-bearing licenses and assisting in the formation of value-based contracting arrangements.

Mimi regularly brings her regulatory knowledge to bear on transactions involving plans, providers, intermediaries and vendors. In this capacity, Mimi evaluates regulatory and business risks for buyers and investors and negotiates deal documents accordingly.

Jiayan Chen is an industry leader on matters relating to health data, technology and research. She represents clients on regulatory and compliance matters, commercial transactions, and investments and acquisitions that require deep knowledge of privacy, data strategies, artificial intelligence (AI) and other healthcare technologies, or research compliance. Clients turn to Jiayan for her practical, industry-informed guidance as they seek to develop, improve, deploy, or acquire solutions or businesses that harness the power of data or technology. Jiayan has extensive experience advising on investments and acquisitions in the life sciences sector, particularly with respect to businesses that conduct clinical research or offer solutions designed to accelerate research or research recruitment. Her practice includes working with patient safety organizations (PSOs) on listing applications, compliance, and strategies for appropriately creating and sharing patient safety work product.

Jiayan’s subject matter and industry insights come from advising a broad range of clients, including AI and other healthcare technology companies; data companies; hospitals and health systems; academic medical centers; genetics companies; digital health companies; PSOs; drug, device, and biotech companies; private equity funds; and platform companies.

Jiayan regularly counsels clients on data privacy requirements under US federal and state privacy law, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and various state genetic, health information, and consumer privacy laws. She works with clients on mapping and implementing data use and sharing strategies with appropriate data governance and programmatic safeguards. Well before the proliferation of generative AI, Jiayan was working with AI developers and deployers on compliance with privacy and research laws, efforts to leverage data to train and validate AI tools, and transactions involving the licensing of AI tools and AI-enabled platforms. These days, Jiayan also guides clients in developing AI governance and advises on proposed regulatory and legislative changes impacting AI.

Jiayan represents clients on a wide array of matters related to biomedical research, including negotiating the full range of agreements impacting research, building research compliance infrastructure, preparing protocols and informed consent and authorizations, and conducting transactions involving research site networks, providers of research solutions and other stakeholders in the biomedical research space. Jiayan’s regulatory practice includes counseling clients on state and federal “sunshine” and gift ban laws. She analyzes proposed arrangements and corporate organizational structures to identify and inform reporting obligations, and helps clients develop compliance mechanisms for managing their reporting obligations.

Gary Scott Davis, PA, advises clients on issues concerning managed care, including emerging health benefit plans, strategic restructurings and reorganizations, dispositions, mergers, joint ventures and contractual matters. The Florida Bar Board of Legal Specialization and Education recognizes Gary as a Board Certified Health Law Attorney.

Gary is a nationally recognized speaker on organizational and reimbursement transactions relating to managed health care, health care contracting and joint ventures. He is also a published author of numerous writings on managed care.

Gary has served as an adjunct lecturer of health care law for the Graduate School of Business Administration (MBA Programs for Executives), University of Miami and on the Advisory Board and faculty of the Nova Southeastern University Institute of Continuing Education for Health Care Professionals.

Brad Dennis represents a broad range of healthcare organizations, with a particular focus on complex transactions involving health systems, health plans, innovative joint ventures, and value-based care models. He works with health systems, health plans, investors, and other providers to design and execute deals that advance clinical, financial, and strategic objectives in the evolving healthcare ecosystem.

In the hospital sector, Brad advises nonprofit and for-profit health systems and academic medical centers on acquisitions, divestitures, affiliations, and joint ventures. He is known for balancing governance, regulatory, and business considerations in ways that keep deals moving and create durable partnerships.

Brad centers a significant portion of his practice  on healthcare joint ventures. He has extensive experience structuring and negotiating hospital service line partnerships, joint ventures, and other multiparty collaborations involving health systems, health plans, and for-profit platforms. He is recognized for navigating complex investment, governance, and regulatory issues to align diverse stakeholders and support growth.

In the managed care space, Brad advises on health plan acquisitions; joint ventures; and the development of provider-sponsored health plans, risk-bearing entities, and value-based care “enabler” models. He is at the forefront of transactions that bring providers and payers together, helping organizations evaluate risk, align incentives, and advance sustainable value-based strategies.

Clients rely on Brad for his practical decision-making, deep industry insight, and ability to deliver innovative solutions that bridge business and clinical priorities. He is a trusted advisor in the boardroom and at the deal table, helping organizations make confident decisions in transactions that reshape markets and define the next generation of healthcare models.

With a focus on complex transactions and regulatory compliance, Patrick Healy represents a wide range of healthcare industry participants, including non-profit and for-profit health systems, academic medical centers, physician organizations, post-acute providers and health plans. He works alongside his clients to execute their most critical transactions and strategic initiatives, leveraging corporate and healthcare regulatory expertise to drive an efficient and client-oriented approach to achieving his client’s business goals. Patrick has helped his clients navigate and successfully close more than 100 healthcare transactions with a focus on mergers, acquisitions, strategic affiliations, classic and contractual joint ventures and joint operating arrangements.

Patrick also routinely advises clients on a variety of transactional and regulatory matters related to value-based payment programs and delivery systems, leveraging his health economics and healthcare policy backgrounds in doing so. He assists accountable care organizations (Medicare, Medicaid, commercial) and other clinically integrated networks with formation, regulatory compliance, physician and management company joint ventures and participating provider relationships. Patrick advises hospitals and physician groups on their participation in Medicare, Medicaid, commercial bundled-payment and population health payment programs.

Patrick also represents several medication-assisted treatment (MAT) providers and other substance use disorder (SUD) treatment providers with respect to growth strategy and transactions and regulatory compliance, including telehealth providers and portfolio companies operating on a physician practice management platform.

Prior to practicing law, Patrick obtained a Masters in Health Economics from the London School of Economics and was the senior research assistant for health policy in the Economic Studies Program at The Brookings Institution—a Washington, D.C. think tank consistently ranked as the most influential in the world.

Ryan S. Higgins represents a broad range of health industry clients, including hospitals, health systems, private equity firms and platform companies, digital health companies, and health care analytics and technology companies, in corporate and transactional matters, including mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and management arrangements, and in health information privacy and cybersecurity matters, including privacy and security compliance program design and implementation, data mapping, contractual negotiations, and breach and cybersecurity incident response and investigation. He serves as co-leader of McDermott’s Health Information Privacy practice.

Tony Maida counsels health care and life sciences clients on government investigations, regulatory compliance and compliance program development. Having served as a government official, Tony has extensive experience in health care fraud and abuse and compliance issues, including the federal and state Anti-Kickback and Stark Laws and Medicare and Medicaid coverage and payment rules. Tony is a practice area leader for the Healthcare Regulatory & Compliance practice.

He represents clients in False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam matters, government audits, civil monetary penalty and exclusion investigations, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) suspension, and revocation actions, negotiating and implementing corporate integrity agreements, and making government self-disclosures. Tony also draws on his background in government investigations to assist clients in evaluating, developing and implementing corporate compliance programs.

Tony previously served as deputy chief of the Administrative and Civil Remedies Branch of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG), where he represented the agency on investigating FCA and civil monetary penalty cases, negotiating and monitoring corporate integrity agreements, and defending exclusion appeals. While serving at HHS, Tony was a principal author of the OIG's current Self-Disclosure Protocol. He also has advised CMS on policy issues, including the Medicare Overpayment Rule and the creation of the Self-Referral Disclosure Protocol.

Tony represents a wide variety of clients, including

• Hospitals and health systems
• Professional services organizations and physician practice management companies, such as anesthesia, dentistry, dermatology, emergency medicine, oncology, primary care, radiology and wellness practices
• Pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers and distributors
• Long-term care, home health, hospice and other post/sub-acute providers
• Pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers
• Dialysis providers
• Laboratories
• Ambulance companies
• Health plans
• Electronic health records and revenue cycle management vendors
• Investors and other financial institutions that invest in and/or support the health care and life science industries

Tony writes and speaks frequently on health care regulatory topics and has lectured on health care fraud and abuse issues at Boston University School of Law and American University Washington College of Law.

Prior to his government service, Tony represented hospitals and physician practices on health care regulatory and corporate compliance issues. During law school, Tony was the editor of the 2001 Symposium issues of the American Journal of Law and Medicine.