BoutinJones
ATTORNEYS AT LAW
Tammy L. McLean
Counsel
“I help healthcare providers navigate regulatory and compliance issues that impact every facet of the healthcare industry. My clients include physicians and other licensed healthcare professionals, individual and group professional corporations, clinics, FQHCs, DME suppliers, hospices, and hospitals. I help my clients with preparing professional services agreements, practice closures and establishing a new practice, medical records, confidentiality and HIPAA matters, Medical Board investigations, peer review, licensing and certification, medical staff bylaws, policies and procedures.”
Tammy has practiced exclusively in the health care transactional and regulatory legal arena for nearly ten years. She has represented hospitals, hospital medical staffs, medical foundations, ambulatory surgery centers and physician groups.
Tammy has extensive experience in health facility licensing and certification matters. She has coordinated the preparation and submission of licensing and certification applications (CDPH, clinical laboratory, pharmacy, FDA, pharmacy, Medicare Part A, B and S certification, Medi-Cal, etc.). In preparing a number of these applications, she has established protocols and contacts to make these tedious projects more effective and efficient for the client. Tammy has also assisted hospitals and ASCs during unscheduled CDPH and CMS surveys by helping to develop corrective action plans to avoid immediate jeopardy situations, respond to statements of deficiencies, reduce remedial actions and achieve compliance before losing licensure and certification.
She is highly knowledgeable in medical staff issues, having counseled hospitals and medical staff clients on medical staff policies and procedures and medical staff bylaws. Tammy has assisted in editing many medical staff bylaws and rules. Additionally, she has edited the model medical staff bylaws and rules for hospital trade associations. She has also been involved in a number of medical staff hearings, representing the hospitals’ medical staff.
Tammy has been particularly active in physician contracting. She has represented medical foundations and hospitals in working on physician recruitment and a variety of physician contracts, ranging from medical director, call coverage, equipment leases and other similar agreements involving physician parties. Tammy has also helped in-house counsel develop contract policies and procedures to assist hospital managers and in-house counsel in achieving and maintaining effective and compliant contracts.
I enjoy getting into the trenches with hospital staff managers and nurses to help bridge the gap between their day-to-day policies and procedures and the implementation of numerous federal and state laws and regulations. During a certification survey, I want to remove the stress so they can focus on what they do best – taking care of patients.
Providing Sophisticated Advice on Complex Health Care Matters
“I’ve had the opportunity to help a variety of healthcare providers and facilities handle many complex (and often very unique) transactional and regulatory health care matters. The never-ending addition of laws and regulations in this highly specialized area of business law require providers and facilities to work with someone who knows the arena inside and out. ”
I love being active, whether it is running, attending my teens’ sports events, playing with our three dogs, tending to our chickens, or growing a thriving vegetable garden. Life keeps me on my toes. And, a great day always includes squeezing in a few minutes with a good book.
Experience
Healthcare
- Represented physician specialists transitioning from a group practice to a newly formed individual professional corporation or new group, which involved issues such as navigating rights and access to medical records, access and notice to patients, avoiding patient abandonment concerns, compensation negotiations, compliance with HIPAA authorization for release of medical records to a new provider, drafting required policies and procedures for the new practice and more.
- Advised individual physicians with their response to mandatory Medical Board investigations regarding complaints filed by patients, regardless of the credibility of the patient complaints.
- Advised healthcare facility and provider clients on HIPAA and California confidentiality law breaches. These include employees who accessed patient information for purposes other than patient-care, posting patient information on social media, patient information being shared with friends of a healthcare provider’s employee, stolen laptops and phones with protected health information (PHI), etc.
- Advised a durable medical equipment supplier regarding compliance with both state and federal anti-kick back laws.
- Advised healthcare clinics regarding patient access to medical records, including minor’s consent rights, divorced parents’ disagreements over minor’s medical care, and court ordered custody arrangements involving a minor’s medical care.
- Negotiated healthcare clinic’s contractual disputes with vendor service providers, such as telemedicine, phone services, and IT services.
- Drafted policies and procedures for licensed clinic clients regarding consent, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, and more.
- Advised on healthcare services provided in homeless shelters and what state licensing options and exceptions are allowed allow hospice services for the homeless population.
- Advised a hospice facility regarding misappropriation of a patient’s opioid medication by a nurse employee and guided the client through the reporting requirements to law enforcement, state and federal regulators.
- Represented a home health agency in preparing a self-report to the OIG regarding the employment of a home health nurse listed on the OIG excluded provider list. Advise clients through the federal and state ensuing investigations and statement of deficiencies.
- Created template professional services agreements for clinics contracting with both employee independent contractor providers and licensed independent practitioners.
- Advised a Federally Qualified Healthcare Center (FQHC) on a patient complaint matter, involving a compliance investigation, peer review committee hearing, final action, 805 and National Practitioner Data Bank reporting, and the fair hearing procedure process.
- Represented client hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers during Medicare validation surveys and decertification actions.
- Represented hospital and clinic facilities with state and federal licensure applications and updates.
- Drafted updates to Medical Staff Bylaws and Rules to comply with current laws.
- Prepared an industry guide on how to handle licensing and certification surveys. This guide was used to prepare member publications for AHLA, CHA and hospital clients.
- Negotiated and drafted numerous physician recruitment, medical director, on-call and professional service agreements for many nonprofit medical foundations.
- Represented a hospital client in an EMTALA complaint and successfully contested the charges to reduce the remedial action.
- Advised hospitals and medical foundations on compliance with state and federal licensing requirements for establishing clinics.
- Prepared a Program Flex proposal from California to do elective angioplasty/stent placement in a Cardiac Cath Lab.
Involvement
Honors
Graduated law school with distinction, Dean’s Honor Roll, Witkin Award
NCAA Post Graduate Scholarship Recipient
Professional Associations and Memberships
State Bar of California
Sacramento County Bar Association, Health Law Section
American Health Lawyers Association
California Society for Healthcare Attorneys