Work through the thorny knots of Healthcare law

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Transcript

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Hello, this is Michael H. Cohen, founder and president of Cohen Healthcare Law Group. I’d like to tell you why we are so passionate about the health and wellness industry, and why our team is dedicated to helping people, like you.

You see, we’re not just lawyers on the other side using our brains, and our heads, to help you think through weighty legal issues, thorny regulatory issues, enforcement hazards, liability challenges, and the thorny knots of the law sometimes imposes in the way of health and wellness businesses and practices.

Of course, we do that.

We are experts in areas, such as Stark and kickback law, fee splitting issues, FDA enforcement, FTC enforcement, legal issues surrounding advertising and marketing, medical board issues, medical technology, healthcare information, healthcare software. All of those areas of healthcare law we specialize in.

But why do we do what we do?

I’d like to say that we’re different. We’re different because we hold a different energy, a different intention, a different awareness than the average law firm. We’re not just lawyers, we’re also people who passionately believe in health and wellness for our own reasons.

How it started

Let me talk a little bit about my own journey. I am the son of a businessman and a doctor. When I was growing up, I would go and visit my Dad’s office where my Dad was in charge of financial matters at a large automobile company in Detroit. My Dad was an economics major in college. He passionately and firmly believed that that way to make the world better was by making the economy better by contributing goods and services, by making things flow more efficiently, by creating products in the world, and by helping companies operate in such a way that all boats would float, everything would rise with the tide.

He believed in capitalism. He believed in the invisible hand of the marketplace. He believed that by making things better, in a business way, everybody’s lives would be improved. At the same time, I would go on rounds with my Mom, a medical doctor, who was also on faculty as a professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine.

My Mom did research. My Mom published a lot of papers. She became a world expert in endocrinology. She wrote a book called, The Paleo Pathway. She’s very into medicine and I would go, and I would watch her at the bedside. I was developing an understanding of the doctor-patient relationship, medical ethics, bio-ethics, the importance of empathy and compassion. All of these themes in my professional and personal life that were later to unfold really were cultivated during my childhood, watching my Dad, watching my Mom go to work, hearing them talk about work, and coming home.

How we’re different

We’re not at a remote distance hovering in just cranking out legal documents. We’re not like Charlie Chaplin in modern times cranking out these huge legal agreements, big memos, and cranking through things from a great objective place in outer space. We’re passionately engaged to help you, to help our clients, because we understand that you, like us, really believe in health and wellness.

You’re doing what you do for a reason.

You’re doing what you do because you believe that your medical device, your cosmetic, your dietary supplement, your integrated and functional medicine practice, your genetic screening, your test, your lab test, your healthcare venture with this particular structure is going to make a huge impact on people’s lives.

By helping you, by helping you operate more efficiently, by helping protect you against potential enforcement hazards, regulatory dangers, and perspective liabilities – we, in fact, are moving the needle in terms of helping lots, and lots, of people.

That’s why we do what we do.

Gift to the world

Yesterday, I was on the phone with a business coach. We were talking about the perception that sometimes there’s a disconnect, or split, between material reality and spiritual reality. But, for me, between my physical embodied existence going to the office, being on the computer, writing, thinking through puzzles, standing in line at Starbucks waiting to get my half sweet caramel macchiato, and the spiritual life. The life that is silent, that is inner, that is alive and, yet, nobody sees it.

It’s very private. That is quiet. That is filled with peace as opposed to the hustle and bustle of the world.

My coach was reflecting that part of my task, my challenge, and my gift to the world is to continue integrating these two sides within my own being. So that we have the descending triangle from the heavens of inspiration, creativity, innovation, fullness, peace, love, nurturing, and all of the above, and the up-swell of the ground occurrence of the earth with everything that, that brings, evolution. So it’s a struggle, challenges, going to Starbucks and waiting in line, moving through legal issues, pushing the envelope of innovation beyond what these sometimes archaic regulatory structures may otherwise allow.

This truly is the union, the synthesis, the marriage of the up-swelling triangle and the downward descending triangle. The union of having an earth, if you will, within my own being. This is something that I am now aware of that I’m working on.

It’s also, to me, a metaphor, or a description, of what happens in the healthcare business or practice. If you’re a doctor, if you’re a clinician, a chiropractor, a acupuncturist, there is this professional knowledge. There’s the inspiration. There’s the sensitivity. There’s the cultivation of your own essence, and then how you bring this to the patient to help them feel better, to help them improve materially, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

The balance

If you are a healthcare business, then there is the technology. There’s the knowledge, the IP, the know-how, the can-do, the creativity, the innovation, the disruptive innovation, and then all of the financing, the raising money. All these things are in the space. It’s really like the yin-yang.

Everything intersects with everything else and you, the entrepreneur, have to hold it all in balance, as guided by the structure of the law and what it allows. We really understand these energetic configurations, if you will. We really understand the journey that you’re going through. We understand the challenges and we come from a holistic place. We are not these disembodied giant head cerebral octopuses, if you will, with our tentacles in the different areas of law.

I mean, sometimes you almost have to be that way. I remember, when I studied Talmud as a child, I would have my finger on the Mishnah, and my other finger on the Gemara, and my other finger on what Rashi said, and then, maybe, there was another commentator, and you had to keep all these things together. I don’t know if I ever had eight fingers, but you had to keep in mind these different strands of law and the commentary that was a wonderful preparation.

So there is that dimension of law, but there’s also understanding what is the client’s objective? What is the clear through point here? What is the fundamental business decision that has to be made? How do we synthesize this, if you will, chaotic map with all of these legal and regulatory hazards and distill it into a clear pathway, so that our clients can punch through, can push through with their own innovation, with their own innovation, with their own gift?

There is no split between the material, the emotional and spiritual, it’s really of a union and the more that I am aware of this union in myself, and how … This really is the energy that we bring, this holistic vision, myself and my team. The more I’m aware of this, the more that we can augment, and support, and facilitate the breakthroughs of our clients.

When I came in the office today, I was thinking about my childhood and the wonderful Passover dinners that we would have when we had all of our relatives arrayed around the table. We would sing and we would chant and we would read. Again, it was that infusion of knowledge, learning, understanding, history, all of the right brain aspects of these are the things that happened, so the left-brain aspects of understanding, Judaism, and the stories of our people.

Then there’s the right-brain, the creativity, the singing, the nurturing, the glasses of wine and all of the ceremony and ritual and tradition. This is, again, that same synthesis, that same bringing together that has been part of this journey.

When I was a Wall Street lawyer and I was drafting these 200-page merger documents for multi-million dollar companies, companies with hundreds of millions of dollars, at the same time I was studying transcendental meditation. Again, it was integrating these different components and learning how to bring a sense of peace, and a sense of balance, and really a higher wisdom.

That’s the energy that we hold here. That’s the energy that I see on my teammates. And that is the integration that we bring to you when we help you have your own breakthroughs, your own synthesis, your own amalgamation, your own creative life contribution to the world through your own service or product.

That’s why we do what we do. We’re really pleased to do it. We love what we do. We love having you as a client. This is Michael H. Cohen, Cohen Healthcare Law Group, and we look forward to working with you and to seeing you soon.