Schedule

• Highlights of the most pressing issues likely to face internal healthcare counsel, such as:
  • Some likely impacts of generative AI, digital transformation and increasing activity surrounding privacy concerns
  • Government and private efforts to track and manage consolidation and convergence
  • The impacts of growing consumer empowerment and wide-spread affordability concerns
• What current or looming issues are most likely to consume the bulk of your time and attention in 2023-24?

• Tips for successful legal relationships with governance
  • Board dynamics and personalities
  • Use of AI in the board room
  • What role(s) is(are) Inhouse Counsel playing
• Compliance discussion scenarios
  • Conflicts of interest
  • Too many hotline calls
• Practical advice scenarios
  • AI and take a stand discussion scenario
  • Multiple boards discussion scenario
• Take-aways and references

• How do I know when I need outside counsel or a consultant?
• Terms of written agreements
• Confidentiality
• Document sharing and retention
• Communication and decision making
• Termination/conclusion of agreement
• What are your key issues and what challenges have you been facing?

‘It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.’ Harry S Truman
Although the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Office of the Inspector General (OIG) emphasize that compliance should be separate and independent of legal counsel, a positive working relationship and synergy between these functions is essential. This session will discuss:

• How can both teams define their roles and responsibilities to align efforts to support corporate objectives without duplication or a high level of overlap? Including practical advice for when the compliance officer reports to legal counsel
• Understanding that risk tolerance can differ depending on the regulatory or financial environment, who gets to decide when compliance and legal have different risk tolerances?
• Tips for putting up a united front to prevent contradictory guidance to the organization and eliminate forum shopping
• Scenarios that may warrant inviting one another into each other’s work. How to navigate when the Attorney-Client Privilege may become an obstacle?
• Ideas on how to collaborate on investigations and corrective actions

• How to ensure the litigators meet your business needs (budget, priorities, timeframe) (“managing down”)
• How to sell arbitration as a value to your business, boss, and board (“managing up”)
• What cases are appropriate for virtual v. in-person arbitration
• What does payer-provider arbitration look like from each party’s perspective
• How to get your money's worth from the arbitration administrator
• The advantages of using AHLA’s Dispute Resolution Service

• GenAI–How to understand, use, and embrace it
• Join a conversation with industry experts to learn GenAI lingo, use cases and opportunities for our profession

This will be an interactive session. What are your key issues and what challenges have you been facing? Bring your troubles and solutions. We will learn from each other.

• What are the generational challenges and opportunities around remote work for legal departments?
• Are you getting an honest day’s work from remote workers? How to monitor and manage in the context of a professional legal setting.
• How will the hybrid/remote work environment impact professional development?
• Does the hybrid/remote work environment impact quality control and legal malpractice?
• How will the hybrid/remote environment impact the talent pool in legal settings?
• Now that we learned how to zoom meetings, do we need to spend travel time to meetings near and far?

Lunch will feature an exciting new way to win the coveted Golden Ferret: the first annual Host City Trivia Contest! In addition to dining and networking with your fellow attendees, you’ll have the chance to decompress, have fun, and show off your impressive command of obscure facts, figures, and charming eccentricities of our nation’s capital.

In this session, you will hear what it is really like at a startup and early stage, high growth health care company as a General Counsel and senior attorney. Three health care lawyers share strategies and stories for innovating and disrupting while navigating regulatory hurdles, business opportunities, and fast-paced change. The speakers will address:

• Prioritizing which challenges to tackle first from getting to know the organization, leadership structure, risk mitigation, insurance, IP, and corporate compliance
• Staffing up and building your department, the legal function and team (what team you may ask?) when your company keeps growing and changing
• How to prepare for and advise the boards and leadership teams in a distributor and innovative organization, such as HIPAA and secondary data uses, corporate practice of medicine doctrine and other 50-state law issues and fraud and abuse questions, including new OIG guidance and DOJ enforcement on new entrant and private equity in healthcare
• Surviving funding rounds–You can't live with them but you can't live without them (what are they? and how do you live through and with them?)

• Examining the “why” (i.e., our core purpose) of what we do professionally since that typically provides the “will” to do it!
• Removing the stigma of “mental health” and “emotional” issues, and understanding that challenges associated with both are a natural  byproduct of what we do as lawyers
• Understanding how our training as attorneys cause us to be reluctant to even acknowledge, let alone address, our own mental health and wellbeing issues, because it implies “weakness” or a “deficiency”
• Defining “resilience,” what it is, and what it is not
• Recognizing the warning signs of diminished well being, and understanding that stress accumulates in an insidious way
• Accepting that disregard of our own well being has a negative impact on the teams we lead and the clients we serve
• Acknowledging the importance of finding ways to adapt to difficult situations and stressors, rather than overanalyzing the “why” or (worse yet) the “unfairness” of it all
• Understanding that our emotions are within our control and can ( and must) be self regulated to achieve optimal well being
• Developing the perspective and traits necessary to build and maintain resilience and emotional and mental well being
• Recognizing that asking for help is an act of courage

This session will offer a chance for in-house counsel to discuss with their peers issues around legal practice, communications, and dealmaking with our clients in Finance. Specifically, the moderators will focus on the following areas:

• Funds Flow project – How do Legal and Finance staff work together to create an effective and efficient funds flow process within a complex health care organization
• Alternative Revenue Models – How does Legal help Finance respond to growing bottom-line pressures driving organizations into new ventures, including payer, pharmacy & infusion, tech ventures, and new service lines)
• What are the ways Legal and Finance can improve communications to ensure a successful and productive relationship between the departments?

‘It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.’ Harry S Truman
Although the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Office of the Inspector General (OIG) emphasize that compliance should be separate and independent of legal counsel, a positive working relationship and synergy between these functions is essential. This session will discuss:

• How can both teams define their roles and responsibilities to align efforts to support corporate objectives without duplication or a high level of overlap? Including practical advice for when the compliance officer reports to legal counsel
• Understanding that risk tolerance can differ depending on the regulatory or financial environment, who gets to decide when compliance and legal have different risk tolerances?
• Tips for putting up a united front to prevent contradictory guidance to the organization and eliminate forum shopping
• Scenarios that may warrant inviting one another into each other’s work. How to navigate when the Attorney-Client Privilege may become an obstacle?
• Ideas on how to collaborate on investigations and corrective actions

• In-house counsel for health systems and health plans play a vital role on a daily basis in navigating and negotiating difficult conversations between their respective clients
• Recent media attention has focused on the perceived increase in tone and frequency of disputes between stakeholders in these critical components of our health care system. These disputes, in turn, have served to fuel ongoing scrutiny by legislators, regulators, enforcers and advocacy groups.
• Please join our experienced panelists as they discuss ways in which in-house attorneys on both sides may balance serving as peacemakers and mediators in these intra-industry disputes while honoring their professional duty of zealous advocacy
• The panel will use examples to illustrate various pain points in negotiations and working relationships between health systems and health plans and highlight strategies for both sides’ in-house attorneys to move their clients to a better end point without a scorched earth approach

Whether or not you’re in the C-Suite, an officer of the company, or manage the work of others, in an inhouse legal role you have the unique opportunity and responsibility to serve as a leader in your organization. This engaging, interactive panel will explore:

• The key attributes and qualities of a leader
• The unique contributions and skills that a legal background can bring to your leadership
• The pros and cons of also taking on business roles within your organization
• The role of mentorship
• How to help other lawyers on the team see themselves as leaders

• GenAI–How to understand, use, and embrace it
• Join a conversation with industry experts to learn GenAI lingo, use cases and opportunities for our profession

This will be an interactive session. What are your key issues and what challenges have you been facing? Bring your troubles and solutions. We will learn from each other.

• What are the generational challenges and opportunities around remote work for legal departments?
• Are you getting an honest day’s work from remote workers? How to monitor and manage in the context of a professional legal setting.
• How will the hybrid/remote work environment impact professional development?
• Does the hybrid/remote work environment impact quality control and legal malpractice?
• How will the hybrid/remote environment impact the talent pool in legal settings?
• Now that we learned how to zoom meetings, do we need to spend travel time to meetings near and far?