Legal Operations in Healthcare: Why Outsourcing Makes Strategic Sense

 

The​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ healthcare world is changing rapidly, and as a result, the legal risks and the regulatory challenges are increasing dramatically. Hospitals,  device manufacturers, pharmaceutical firms, and medical groups are burdened with compliance obligations, contractual demands, litigation risk, and internal operational pressures. This is the point where legal process-outsourcing can do a lot of good by giving the legal teams the necessary space to focus on strategy, instead of being overwhelmed with paperwork.

In the healthcare sector, to be precise, there is only one outsourcing provider that is different from the rest. Aeren LPO is an outsourcing provider that is committed to being a partner with healthcare clients. They take over the process-heavy legal work so the internal counsel can focus on the big picture. They characterise their contribution in this way: "Healthcare is probably one of the most complex industries from a legal point of view... This is the point where Aeren LPO is adding to your team by giving your attorneys more time to focus on strategy while we handle the process-heavy legal work."

The pressing legal challenges in healthcare

According​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ to Aeren LPO, major points of pressures are pinpointed as main patient‐privacy issues:

Healthcare information of a large volume and a multitude of vendors make up an ecosystem where the

compliance with the frameworks such as HIPAA (in the U.S.) must be absolutely guaranteed.

• Patient privacy issues: Health care information of a large volume and a multitude of vendors make up an ecosystem where the compliance with frameworks such as HIPAA (in the U.S.) must be absolutely guaranteed.
• Pharmaceutical regulatory documentation: For a drug firm or a medical-device manufacturer, the submission to regulatory authorities, e.g., the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, entails the provision of hundreds of pages in a specific format; thus, it is very easy to be overlooked and can put a product on hold.
• Pharmaceutical regulatory documentation: For a drug firm or a medical-device manufacturer, the submission to regulatory authorities, e.g., the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, entails the provision of hundreds of pages in a specific format; hence, any misstep may result in a product being shelved.
• Malpractice & litigation work: Whenever disagreements become litigated, attorneys who possess medical and legal knowledge analyze clinical charts, write expert-witness statements, and manage depositions.
• Malpractice & litigation work: When disputes are taken to court, in which clinical charts are reviewed, expert witness statements are prepared, and depositions are managed, attorneys with both medical and legal knowledge are required.
• Provider contracting and billing compliance: Hospital-physician agreements, vendor contracts, Medicare audits, fraud‐prevention documentation, etc. - all of these are extremely complicated in the healthcare sector.

What Aeren LPO brings to the table

Outsourcing​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ should not be viewed as a mere task of transferring work outside of the company, but rather the way to achieve it with scale, expertise, and cost-effectiveness. Aeren LPO is providing a catalog of specialized solutions that are perfectly fit for the medical area. 

• HIPAA documentation initiatives: creation of policies, breach-response plans, risk assessments, vendor/business-associate agreement reviews.
• FDA-submission support: document preparation, regulatory correspondence, clinical-trial paperwork, support for 510(k) applications.
• Medical record analysis: chart review, expert-witness prep, case summaries by attorneys familiar with clinical terminology.
• Healthcare contract work: employment agreements, joint ventures, vendor contracts, insurance participation contracts.
• Audit-response help: Medicare over payment appeals, compliance documentation, billing-practice reviews.

Besides, they provide some excellent reasons why healthcare clients opt for them:

• Experience across hospitals, medical groups, device companies and pharmaceutical firms.
• Major cost savings: a claimed decrease in legal costs by 40-50% due to the faster provision of services.
• Systems in line with HIPAA for patient-info security.
• Comprehensive service: from contract review to regulatory investigations
• Flexibility: working around clinical schedules and urgent ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌situations

Why​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ this matters now

The healthcare industry is facing a lot of challenges all at the same time. These challenges include cost-containment, regulatory scrutiny, risks of litigation, rapidly digitalisation of records, and more vendor ecosystems that are also becoming very complex. Legal teams in such situations are likely to lose themselves in the day-to-day operational activities and hence fail to direct strategy. By using the services of Aeren LPO, the internal counsel can be allowed to assume their status as strategic partners of the organization: formulating policy, having an impact on operations, giving advice to the management — instead of being occupied with document handling.

The question can also be looked at from a business point of view, where it is said that the cost-savings (e.g., 40-50% lower legal cost) enable the law firm to free up resources that can be repurposed for high-value work. Likewise, from a risk standpoint, presence of a team well-prepared for healthcare-related legal tasks can help in lowering the risk of compliance failure, submission of wrong information, and incurring of legal cases that are expensive.

Final thought

In regulated and risk-heavy industries such as healthcare, the concentration of legal risk being the main factor as well as its high specialization level, outsourcing the legal-process workload should not only be regarded as a saving move but also a strategic enabler. When you outsource to a company well-versed with the locale and thus doing away with the need to be reactive and overwhelmed, your legal department can, instead, be proactive and impactful. This shift is increasingly becoming indispensable for many healthcare organizations that want to stay in front of regulation, litigation and operational complexity.