Kathleen M. Premo

When health care businesses need a business-savvy legal partner to lead merger and acquisition (M&A) growth initiatives, serve as outside General Counsel or address complex regulatory or strategic business challenges, they turn to attorney Kathleen Premo.

For more than 20 years, Kathleen has served as a legal and strategic advisor to a diverse range of health care and business clients, including private equity sponsors and their platform investments, hospital and health systems, primary care and specialty medical groups, telehealth innovators, and national pharmacy and hospice organizations. 

Kathleen’s clients appreciate her sophisticated business acumen and insightful, real-world legal counseling, honed while serving as a legal advisor, strategist, and health care executive during her years as General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer for various health care clients. Her clients report that they rely on her seasoned legal advice and midwestern work ethic to manage legal and business teams to accomplish push goals on budget and despite significant obstacles. She treats each client’s business as though it were her own and deploys organizational and problem-solving skills to meet challenges head-on and deliver on simultaneous challenging legal projects. 

Kathleen leads the firm’s General Counsel Services group and consistently incorporates a business perspective and business-forward work product to serve her clients. She advises a full spectrum of health care industry service providers and businesses, including risk-bearing medical groups and management services organizations (MSOs), private equity investors and their platform investments, independent physicians associations, accountable care organizations (ACOs), hospitals and post-acute providers (including hospices, nursing homes, and home health agencies), telehealth organizations, and specialty care networks, among others.

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Kathleen’s work regularly includes the following:

• Providing business-forward general counsel services to her clients to assist with all aspects of their health care businesses, such as guidance to business clients on strategic growth and development, regulatory considerations, new market entry, infrastructure and contracting controls, licensing, leadership transition planning, insurance and risk management best practices, and employment disputes
• Representing health care providers in a variety of complex business transactions, including health care acquisitions and divestitures, recapitalization, business restructuring, and joint ventures
• Guiding on all aspects of government and commercial payor contracting, including Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercial risk contracting and gainsharing arrangements
• Managing all aspects of transactional regulatory health care due diligence
• Actively representing clients in such contractual matters as physician employment agreements, professional services agreements, and electronic health record agreements and transitions
• Advising health care clients on state and federal regulatory compliance, fraud and abuse, the Stark Law, corporate compliance, licensing, HIPAA, government investigations, quality and peer review, civil and administrative health care litigation, and state and federal licensing
• Providing strategic guidance on the organization, growth, governance, and operations of for-profit and nonprofit companies
• Advising telehealth clients on licensing laws, regulatory compliance, and corporate transactions
• Providing real-world advice to health care employers on employee and provider matters as a member of the Health Employment and Labor (HEAL) strategic industry group

Before joining Epstein Becker Green, Kathleen was the founder of Premo Advisors, where she provided executive-level legal solutions to companies presented with growth opportunities, business sales and acquisitions, strategic initiatives, and material business challenges. She has personally managed more than 75 sales or acquisitions involving, in total, hundreds of medical practices throughout the United States.

Previously, Kathleen was General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer of a multi-state Medicare Advantage MSO and Medical Group. In that role, she served as the lead attorney for national third-party payor contracting—including Medicare Advantage and other risk-sharing arrangements, forms of pay-for-performance, ACO structures, collaborative care arrangements, and network contracting. Kathleen also managed the company’s acquisitions and growth strategies, physician contracting, litigation and employment matters, and its legal risk management program. Earlier in her career, she served as employment and regulatory counsel for a network of nonprofit children’s hospitals and as corporate integrity agreement compliance, licensing, and government reimbursement counsel for a national drugstore chain. Her professional career began at a business and health care law firm in Minnesota that represented large privately held commercial, health care, and post-secondary educational institutions.

Kathleen has conducted seminars and presented on risk contracting, health care reform, efficient and effective business law advice, law office development, and HIPAA.

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• Chambers USA, America’s Leading Lawyers for Business: Florida—Health Care, "Leader in Their Field" (2023 to 2024)
• The Legal 500 United States: Healthcare: Service Providers (2019); M&A Middle Market (Sub $500 Million) (2023 to 2024)
• Who's Who Legal: Healthcare (2020)
• Tampa Bay Business Journal: Top Corporate Counsel, "Finalist" (2014)

Education

• University of Minnesota Law School (J.D., with honors, 1999)
  • Health Law
• University of Iowa (B.A., with honors, 1995)

Professional & Community Involvement

• American Health Lawyers Association
• Community Action Stops Abuse, Inc. (CASA), Executive Committee, Board of Directors, and Chair of Catalyst/Corporate Engagement Committee
• Florida Bar Health Law Section
• Health Care Compliance Association