Hi, I’m Michael H. Cohen. I’m founding attorney at Cohen Healthcare Law Group. We provide legal strategies and solutions to businesses that accelerate health and wellness.

Today’s topic, which is relevant now might be different in the year 3,500, but right now, why do you need a healthcare attorney, not the internet or AI?

Why do you need someone like us? And there’s no chip in my brain. It’s just human knowhow. What do we do in a time when information is just to click away? It can be very tempting to rely on web searches or AI for answers to legal and regulatory questions, even in healthcare, which is a lot more abstruse and esoteric than general business law.

But when it comes to complex healthcare and FDA regulations, one thing that really counts is expertise and experience. It helps to be a war veteran, if you will, of battles in the industry. The healthcare laws are complicated. They’re updated all the time. Online sources can provide a general overview and some citations, but the key is really the interpretation.

It’s the nuanced industry specific, fact specific, case specific. And the trick is in applying the law to that situation. So, for example, we represented a telehealth company. They relied on a web search. They get some kind of broad patient protection guidelines, but they didn’t meet HIPAA standards.

And when the business was audited, they were facing heavy fines and penalties and they had to quickly overhaul their procedures. So, by relying on generalities, they really lost the opportunity to get it right the first time. They’ve got it right the first time, much more traction with their customers, and they wouldn’t have been burned into the ground almost by the regulators.

And HIPAA is not the whole game. HIPAA, there’s also state laws, and they look like HIPAA, but they’re not HIPAA, they’re on the state side. So, these are things that you might know. Now, maybe you could have a search that’s all inclusive and prompt to the end of the day, but really, it’s about applying those rules to your situation.

And your situation is going to be very nuanced. It’s just like operating company. You know right now you have people, operating companies. You need that human judgment and the experience to know how to make the judgements, so you don’t make mistakes. And so even though, like what to spot.

If you’d like to dive deeper into any of the topics we’ve talked about today, reach out to us. Click below. We’d love to talk to you. We look forward to it.