Overview

With more than 30 years of experience at the intersection of business law, health care regulation, and government enforcement, attorney Raja Sékaran provides practical, business-minded solutions that help health care organizations navigate complex legal, compliance, and regulatory challenges.

Raja’s practice focuses on resolving issues critical to the financial viability and regulatory integrity of the health care system. He works on legal matters involving managed care, population health, compliance, government investigations, professional corporate formation, provider and payer transactions, the revenue cycle, and governance.

Trusted Advisor Across the Health Care Landscape

Raja is a trusted legal and business advisor to a wide variety of health care organizations, such as health care delivery systems and hospitals (including academic medical centers), physician groups, independent practice associations (IPAs), health plans, ancillary providers, trade associations, private equity investors, county health authorities, and California’s private health insurance exchange.

Dual Focus: Government and Commercial Matters

Raja’s career bridges both government and private commercial matters.

  • Government Work: Raja has represented parties in more than 100 False Claims Act (FCA) government investigations, innumerable audits, civil fraud cases, and federal health care fraud prosecutions. He has also negotiated Corporate Integrity Agreements (CIAs), advised on voluntary compliance programs, and represented providers and payers in their licensing applications and defense of enforcement actions.
  • Commercial Work: His practice includes advising both boards and management on governance issues, corporate formation, commercial payer/provider arrangements, purchase and sale transactions, and revenue cycle management.

Public Service in Federal Oversight

Raja began his health law career in private practice before serving as Senior Counsel in the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. There, he served in all the OIG’s industry-facing legal branches, representing the OIG in FCA matters, negotiating numerous CIAs, conducting CIA site visits, and drafting OIG advisory opinions and bulletins on the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and related laws.

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Leadership in the Health Care Industry

After public service, Raja held several senior leadership roles:

  • Vice President of Regulatory Affairs of a national, publicly traded health care company;
  • Chief Legal Officer and Compliance Officer (respectively) of two California health plans; and
  • Vice President & Associate General Counsel of one of the largest health care delivery systems in the country, where he led the legal teams serving the Compliance, Managed Care, and Revenue Cycle Departments.

In these roles, he brought hundreds of matters to a close, including transactions, investigations, audits, and system reorganizations.

Law Firm Leadership

Before joining Epstein Becker Green, Raja was a partner at a national law firm, co-chairing its Health Care Group and Racially & Ethnically Diverse Affinity Group and serving on its Political Action Committee Board. Currently, he serves as the Managing Partner of Epstein Becker Green’s San Francisco office and as a member of the firm’s Attorney Development Working Group.

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Focus Areas

Experience

  • Serves as lead outside general counsel to an IPA consisting of over 5,000 physicians throughout Northern California. Raja provides guidance and representation on a range of matters—from corporate governance and regulatory compliance to policy formation, payer negotiations, and physician disciplinary proceedings.
  • Serves as outside regulatory counsel to a publicly traded company operating IPAs, health plans, and medical groups, by supporting mergers, acquisitions, and payer strategy, including a recent $200 million transaction for the purchase of a health plan and IPA’s management company.
  • Serves as lead counsel for a local health authority in its attempt to create a new health plan offering a single-plan Medi-Cal managed care program for a California county. This involves navigating a complicated regulatory framework among the California Department of Managed Health Care, the California Department of Health Care Services, and the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
  • Serves as health care regulatory counsel to a major Southern California academic medical center consisting of multiple hospitals and affiliates in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, providing counsel and transactional support to the client on regulatory matters, physician transactions, coding, billing, and operations.
  • Serves as lead counsel for a joint venture among multiple Southern California hospital associations that became the primary shared organization providing patient safety and quality data analytics to California hospitals. Raja advised on the design and build of a data analytics program to comply with privacy, data security, and antitrust laws.
  • Represents an electronic health record company in responding to a government subpoena and resolving its underlying FCA case related to physician transactions under the Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute.
  • Has represented various clients in more than 100 government investigations at the state and federal levels, including approximately 75 under the FCA.
  • Has represented telemedicine companies and device manufacturers in investigations brought by professional boards under the California Department of Consumer Affairs.
  • Provided public policy advocacy and legal representation to an optical medtech company in matters involving the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
  • Provided legislative advocacy at both the federal and state levels for multiple COVID-19 testing companies, including lobbying for a disease advocacy organization to secure continued state funding for its disease registry.
  • Navigated health care clients through regulatory, operational, and enforcement issues relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, including advising on telemedicine issues, revenue cycle, and billing implications of COVID-19 testing under the CARES Act, and lobbying government agencies to accept new testing modalities.
  • Represented a cooperating witness in a U.S. Department of Justice prosecution arising from its COVID-19 Fraud Task Force, negotiating a plea agreement and serving as counsel of record through the sentencing phase.
  • Led the internal investigation into a complex cybersecurity attack (involving spear phishing and identity theft) on a health plan client, resulting in a loss of nearly $1 million. Using Raja’s investigative report, the FBI identified the hacker’s location and opened a grand jury proceeding against an identified suspect. Raja’s team successfully recovered most of the stolen funds via insurance claims and a settlement with a bank.
  • Co-led a multidisciplinary team to advise a health plan and Northern California-based IPA on their merger and sale to a population health management company, navigating the client through multiple transactions to combine strategic corporate transactional structures, avoiding significant regulatory risks at both the federal and state levels, and securing regulatory approval from the Department of Managed Health Care.
  • Represented a radiology, gastroenterology, and telemedicine group in its mergers, ownership structure reorganization, and relationship to its management services organization.
  • Served as regulatory counsel to private equity investors in successful sales and acquisitions of interests in a speech-language pathology group, a clinical trial company, and a group of surgery centers.
  • Secured from a Medicaid agency a stay of the suspension of Medicaid program payments to a specialty pharmacy that supplies HIV/AIDS medication to vulnerable and low-income individuals, by demonstrating to the Medicaid agency the devastating effect the suspension would have had on vulnerable individuals.
  • Led the representation of a nonprofit health care system spanning three states and including hospitals, clinics, and physician groups. Raja handled regulatory matters involving physician transactions and billing of federal health care programs, including leading privileged audits, investigations, policy formation, and, when necessary, self-disclosures to government agencies.

Recognition

  • Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business: California—Healthcare, "Leader in Their Field" (2021 to 2025); “Notable Practitioner” (2020)
  • Daily Journal: “Top Healthcare Lawyer” (2020 to 2022)
  • The Legal 500 United States: Healthcare: Health Insurers (2025)
  • The National Law Journal: “Healthcare Trailblazers” (2020)

Credentials

Education

  • Georgetown University Law Center (LL.M., with distinction in Healthcare Law, 1997)
  • Cornell Law School (J.D., 1992)
    • Concentration in Business Law & Regulation
  • University of California, Berkeley (B.A., with distinction, 1988)

Bar Admissions

  • California

Professional & Community Involvement

  • American Health Lawyers Association
  • Elder Care Alliance, Board of Directors, Chair of Audit Committee
  • Health Care Compliance Association
  • South Asian Bar Association
  • Law360 Health Editorial Advisory Board (2019 to 2020)
  • California Society for Healthcare Attorneys, President (2013 to 2015)

Media

Events

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Past Events

  • The Bridge Group's 2021 Fall Meeting: Government Enforcement Update
  • The Bridge Group's 2021 Fall Meeting: Private Equity & M&A—What’s Happening
  • HCCA's Virtual Regional Healthcare Compliance Conference: Regulatory, Enforcement Updates and Hot Topics
  • 5th Annual West Coast Ambulatory Surgery Center Seminar: Reimbursement Strategies
  • 5th Annual West Coast Ambulatory Surgery Center Seminar: Monitoring Compliance and Physician Relationships
  • Hardesty Healthcare Solutions Luncheon Series: A Day in the Life of a Healthcare Regulatory Lawyer
  • 4th Annual West Coast Ambulatory Surgery Center Seminar: Opportunities and Limitations for ASCs in a Value-Based Environment
  • American Health Lawyers Association Webinar: What Keeps You and Your Clients Up at Night? Brainstorming Thorny Fraud and Abuse Issues
  • California Society for Healthcare Attorneys Fall Meeting: Different Sides/Different Perspectives – Review of Topical False Claims Act Healthcare Cases
  • 2017 AHLA Annual Meeting: When 21st Century Innovations Meet a 20th Century Legal Framework: Issue Spotting for the Healthcare Lawyer

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