Gary W. Herschman and Laurajane Kastner, Members of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences and Corporate Services practices, in the firm’s Newark and Princeton offices, respectively, authored an article in the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA) In-House Counselor newsletter, titled “10 Key Issues in Health Care Facility Vendor Contracts.”
Following is an excerpt (see below to download the full article in PDF format):
Vendors often present hospital and health care facility general counsel offices with their “template” form agreement and tell facilities’ general counsel offices that the form “is signed by all of our customers.” Meanwhile, the facilities’ executives are pressing to get the contract reviewed and signed quickly. Most vendor agreements, however, are negotiable and should be negotiated in order to better protect the interests of the facility.
This article sets forth strategies for negotiating some of the key provisions in a vendor contract which may be controversial between the vendor and facility. (Agreements for certain vendor contracts, such as software and IT services, and compliance auditing, have other key provisions which can be addressed in a separate article).