New multidisciplinary task force to help clients identify, evaluate opportunities created by health care reform

Drawing on its analysis of the historic Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P. has established a multidisciplinary task force to help clients identify and evaluate key opportunities created by health care reform.

"This legislation has launched what will be known as the decade of health care reform," said David W. Grauer, who leads Squire Sanders' health care and life sciences practice. "Reform will literally reshape one-sixth of the US economy and ripple through the rest, driven by the additional impacts of an aging population and rapid advances in medical science and biotechnology. Businesses need to move now to stay abreast."

Squire Sanders health care lawyer Peter A. Pavarini, who leads the task force with Grauer, said three key factors surfaced from an extensive analysis of the Act: access to health care, health care reform funding and related regulation.

"Taken together, these three factors result in change that touches every sector of the US economy and, indirectly, the global economy. As such, this reform touches Squire Sanders clients throughout the world," Pavarini said. "Our analysis, and our deep understanding of our clients' business and the health care and life science industries, made it clear our clients are best served by a cohesive multidisciplinary approach."

The task force has established 11 Reform Initiative Teams (RITs) staffed with lawyers from a variety of practices and offices. The RITs focus on the following issues and sectors:

• Academic medical centers and life science companies
• Community benefit plans and audits
• Legislative and regulatory implementation
• Consolidation and restructuring
• Fraud and abuse
• Infrastructure development
• Cross-border issues
• Workforce development
• Payer/insurance reform
• Senior living
• Technology

"We consider the reform and its repercussions to be a great opportunity to work even more closely with clients, providing them with the best combination of legal expertise to help them manage and make the most of this change," Grauer said.