For more than 20 years, attorney Kathleen Premo has served as a legal and strategic advisor for a diverse range of health care and business clients, including Fortune 500 companies, hospital and health systems, Medicare Advantage provider groups, and entrepreneurial privately held companies.
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.
Kathleen advises a full spectrum of health care industry service providers and businesses, including such risk-bearing organizations as medical service organizations (MSOs), independent practice associations (IPAs), accountable care organizations (ACOs), physician organizations and large medical groups, hospitalist and post-acute providers (including hospices, nursing homes, and home health agencies), specialty care networks, ambulatory care facilities, management companies, and private equity specializing in health care companies, among others.
Kathleen regularly:
- Represents health care providers in a variety of complex business transactions, including strategic business development initiatives; new market entry; mergers and acquisitions; business restructuring; transition planning; joint ventures; Medicare Advantage and commercial risk contracting; ACOs, MSOs, IPAs, physician-hospital organizations, and population health arrangements; clinical integration networks; Certificate of Need (CON) applications; and practice transformation
- Provides Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) licensing guidance and implementation support
- Manages all aspects of transactional regulatory health care due diligence
- Actively represents clients in a variety of contractual matters, including managed care contracting, professional services agreements, government and private payor contracting, and electronic health record agreements and transitions
- Leads the general counsel advisory services practice providing guidance to business clients on strategic growth and development; mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures; new market entry; infrastructure and contracting controls; leadership transition planning; risk management best practices; and employment disputes
- Advises 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
- Provides strategic guidance on the organization, growth, governance, and operations of for-profit and nonprofit companies
- Advises clients in the medical marijuana industry on licensing laws, regulatory compliance, and corporate transactions
- As a member of the Health Employment and Labor (HEAL) strategic industry group, provides real world advice to health care employers on employee and provider matters
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 30 sales or acquisitions involving, in total, hundreds of medical practices.
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 Florida and Georgia 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 advising, law office development, and HIPAA.