Legal Strategies for Telehealth Startups: Key Insights and FAQs (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hi, in today's video, we discuss legal strategy for a telehealth startup. I'm Michael H. Cohen, founding attorney at Cohen Healthcare Law Group. We help healthcare industry clients like you navigate healthcare and FDA legal issues so you can grow or perhaps start your healthcare business. Let me give you a quick overview of the typical legal needs of a healthcare startup. So first, you've got to vet the business model, which means identifying major legal roadblocks and proposed legal strategies or solutions, if available. Second, the big chunk is to draft documents, which could include, for example, bylaws of a professional corporation, employment agreements, MSO agreement, privacy policy terms of use, and service agreements with the client or customers. If a healthcare venture is founded by individuals who are not licensed MDs, psychologists, or other such clinical care providers, the MSO model might work best. The MSO itself could be an S-corp or an LLC, while the professional clinical work should be housed in the professional corporation. The professional medical corporation is the best to hire additional physicians, nurse practitioners, or registered nurses, and physician assistants. In California, the Moscone-Knox Professional Corporations Act does allow some mixing and matching of healthcare professionals so long as, for example, in a professional medical corporation, the sum total of licensed MDs or DOs together have 51% or more of the shares. Couple of typical FAQs for our healthcare startup client. How much insurance should I get? Well, that's a question for your insurance broker. Can you help us form the corporation? Sure. It's faster and more cost-effective to hire a vendor that does this a thousand times a day than to pay a lawyer for technical mechanics that a service can do. Now let's get to the nitty-gritties, the legal issues. Should we have a medical director? No. Bad idea. See our blog post if someone asks you to be medical director. Run. Can the MSO help the professional corporation hire and fire staff? Sure. But the ultimate decision has to rest with the professional corporation. Otherwise, you'll likely end up with a corporate practice of medicine problem. Do healthcare providers need to be licensed in every state? Well, typically they have to be licensed in their home state and the state where the patient is located, unless that state has an exemption as some states do for healthcare services during the pandemic, which they consider a public emergency. Thanks for watching. Please contact us with many more questions and comments. Here's to the success of your healthcare venture. We look forward to speaking with you soon.