In 2012, several American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA) members and leaders expressed interest in developing informal networking and professional development opportunities for women members and program attendees. After receiving feedback from informal in-person networking events held at the 2012 Annual Meeting and the 2012 Fraud and Compliance Forum, an AHLA Women’s Network took shape and in January 2014, the Women’s Leadership Council formalized the operation of the Network.

This year’s quarterly series of interviews with some of AHLA’s women members was designed with the intent to give young professional members an opportunity to profile some of our more experienced or uniquely situated AHLA members and leaders, to learn more about their path to success, and challenges they have faced along the way.

Recently, the Federal Circuit provided some insight about the “error” upon which a reissue patent application can be based under 35 U.S.C. § 251. See In re Dinsmore, No. 2013-1637, 2004 WL 2337372 (Fed. Cir. June 10, 2014).

The current section 251 states:

Whenever any patent is, through error, deemed wholly or partly inoperative or invalid, by reason of a defective specification or drawing, or by reason of the patentee claiming more of less than he had a right to claim in the patent, the Director shall, on the surrender of such patent and the payment of the fee required by law, reissue the patent for the invention disclosed in the original patent, and in accordance with a new and amended application, for the unexpired part of the term of the original patent. 35 U.S.C. § 251 (2012).  (The previous version of this statute, which was in effect at the relevant time for the case, included the phrase: “without any deceptive intention.”  This change was made Sept. 16, 2012.)

For construction financing of single- or dual-tenant medical office buildings, credit tenant lease (CTL) offers an intriguing option for developers. A healthcare system or a large healthcare-related company would fit the criteria for consideration.

With CTL financing, the lease rental income is leveraged as the basis for repayment of the loan. In fact, the rental payments are assigned and paid directly to the lender. Because the CTL structure more closely resembles a bond rather than a real estate loan, the interest rate on the note will be determined by the creditworthiness of the tenant(s) rather than the value of the underlying real estate and creditworthiness of, or credit enhancement from, the borrower. The higher the creditworthiness of the tenant(s), the lower the interest rate on the loan.

The attorney-client privilege applies with equal force to internal investigations today as it did 30 years ago thanks to the D.C. Circuit’s recent decision in In re: Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc., No. 14-5055 (D.C. Cir. June 27, 2014). The appeals court decision vacates the March 6, 2014, district court decision in the same case. At the district court, Judge James Gwin ruled that the attorney-client privilege did not protect documents developed during KBR’s internal investigations of potential fraud relating to its LOGCAP III contract. According to Judge Gwin, KBR’s investigations were not privileged because they were conducted “pursuant to regulatory law and corporate policy rather than for the purpose of obtaining legal advice.”

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the New York State Attorney General intervened in a federal False Claims Act (FCA) case on June 27, 2014, accusing Mount Sinai Health System of failing to report and return Medicaid overpayments within 60 days of identifying them. See U.S. ex rel Kane v. Healthfirst, Inc., et al., No. 11-2325 (S.D.N.Y). This case is one of the first examples of litigation involving “the 60-day repayment provision” under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently issued a policy paper urging state legislators to carefully evaluate proposals that limit nurse practitioners’ scope of practice. Nurse practitioners (also known as Advanced Practice Registered Nurses, or APRNs) are registered nurses who have been both educated and received specialized training beyond the requirements for a registered nurse. Notably, the FTC paper concluded that expanding the scope of APRN practice would create more competition in the health care sector – helping to control costs, improve quality, promote innovation, and expand access to care.

Husch Blackwell’s Healthcare, Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals team continues to grow and to receive national recognition. National healthcare publication Modern Healthcare announced Husch Blackwell is the 12th-largest healthcare law firm in the U.S. according to its 2014 rankings, up from No. 17 last year. Utilizing differing measurement techniques, American Health Lawyers Association also ranked healthcare practices, placing Husch Blackwell as fifth-largest in the country in its 2014 list, released earlier in June. This ranking advanced from ninth in 2013, 14th in 2012 and 18th in 2011.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued its first final written decisions June 20, 2014, in four inter partes reviews (IPR) of pharmaceutical-related patents. The four decisions effectively invalidated all 58 of the challenged patent claims spread across four patents owned by Merck & Cie and South Alabama Medical Science Foundation (SAMSF) who previously accused Husch Blackwell client Gnosis SpA of infringement.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published its final revisions (“Final Rule”) to the Medicare Conditions of Participation (CoPs) on May 12, 2014. Among other things, CMS proposed to revise its current interpretation of the hospital medical staff composition at 42 C.F.R. § 482.22 and modified the prohibition on the use of a unified and integrated medical staff for a multi-hospital health system.