McDermott Will & Emery

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Nora Klein
Associate
Office: Chicago
Years at Firm: 2

What is an interesting fact about yourself that others may not know?

I played college golf at University of Illinois and in September 2019 I will be competing in the United States Women’s Mid-Amateur National Championship in Flagstaff Arizona. This will be the 33rd annually national championship for female golfers over 25 years old. The United States Golf Association runs 16 National Championships a year and to be able to play in one is every golfer’s dream. I feel so grateful to work at a place that quite literally supports me on and off the golf course.

What is the biggest opportunity and greatest challenge facing clients in your area of focus today?

The biggest challenge for our clients is also the biggest opportunity – how to grow in the revolutionary and highly profitable yet competitive life sciences industry, which is continuously expanding into new and often groundbreaking subsectors. Navigating these issues makes working at McDermott an enjoyable challenge. We not only need to assist our clients in finding innovative ways to grow their enterprises and remain compliant with healthcare rules and regulations, but also provide thoughtful, forward-looking solutions and plans that allow them to grow as these new subsectors emerge.

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Rachel Stauffer
Director, McDermott+Consulting
Focus Area: Health Policy Advocacy and Lobbying
Years at McDermott+Consulting: 1.5

What is your favorite part about your health policy work at McDermott+Consulting? 

We have a deep bench of experts on a wide variety of health policy issues. This allows our team to be involved in so many different aspects of health policy – and that is my favorite part. There is no “normal” or “typical” day here. We work on different types of projects (advocacy, stakeholder engagement, strategic planning, for example) for different clients, including hospital systems, diagnostics, rural health, physician groups and others, in any given day. It keeps me on my toes and gives me an opportunity to learn new things every day.

What is the biggest opportunity and greatest challenge facing clients in your area of focus today? 

The biggest opportunity and greatest challenge facing clients today is the same: the unsettled health policy landscape. The politics around health policy are not as clear cut as they used to be, even just a few years ago. This puts clients in a unique position to shape and influence policy in ways that were not necessarily available a few years ago. On the other hand, there is little ability to predict what happens next. , It can be challenging to navigate and understand where to focus and how to deliver your message when the politics become murky but, that is what we are here for!

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Drew Elizabeth McCormick
Associate
Office: Boston
Years at Firm: 2

What is your favorite part about practicing health care law at McDermott? 

I get to work with world class lawyers on cutting edge issues and help our clients navigate the challenges of succeeding in a very dynamic, heavily regulated industry. I am constantly being challenged and learning new things, all while having the honor of helping guide our clients in transforming health care.

What is the biggest opportunity and greatest challenge facing clients in your area of focus today? 

Definitely the ability to take on risk and succeed in a value-based payment paradigm. We are seeing many shifts in the industry, which are largely being driven by fundamental changes in reimbursement structures away from fee for service. Compounding this, the regulatory framework is lagging behind in many regards, creating tensions and uncertainty that our clients lean on us to help them resolve.

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Anisa Mohanty
Associate
Office: Washington, DC
Years at Firm: 3

What is your favorite part about practicing health care law at McDermott? 

I started out pre-med in college, but I quickly realized what excited me was the intersection between science, medicine, policy and law. Many of our clients are at the forefront of shaping policy in the life sciences space through their innovations, and the quality of our health care practice means we have the opportunity to partner with and support them in really exciting projects. I am grateful for the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience of my colleagues—it pushes me to be a better, smarter and savvier lawyer.

What is the biggest opportunity and greatest challenge facing clients in your area of focus today?

Because our clients are addressing some of the most complex challenges in healthcare and healthcare delivery, often there aren’t straightforward regulatory paradigms for their businesses. Our clients want to do the right thing, but that can be challenging because their regulators haven’t yet articulated how they will enforce the law as it applies to their services and solutions. Digital health is a great example of this and there’s a lot of opportunity to advocate for our clients so that regulators can take industry perspectives into account when finalizing regulations.

What kind of client work gets you most excited when it comes across your desk?

I love when a client has a service or product under development that has real potential to address an unmet public health need. It goes without saying that the American healthcare system is incredibly complex, but if I’m doing my job well, piece-by-piece, I’m helping to untangle it so our clients can deliver meaningful therapies and solutions.

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Erika Mayshar
Partner
Office: Los Angeles
Years at Firm: 2

What is your favorite part about practicing health care law at McDermott? 

When I moved to McDermott, I was proud to be joining the nation’s top health care law practice,   but the industry rankings don’t tell the whole story. The breadth and depth of expertise are backed by a collegial and innovative culture that builds strong relationships among colleagues and clients. Health lawyers at McDermott truly enjoy their work and working with each other.

What is the biggest opportunity and greatest challenge facing clients in your area of focus today? 

Industry disruption in health care is an ongoing reality for boards of directors and health system leadership. Being able to respond to moving-target opportunities is a challenge for leaders facing fast-paced regulatory change and economic pressure. The challenge is to determine what type of change makes sense for each organization – not to embrace disruption for the sake of staying current, but to seek opportunities that further the corporate mission and then implement change with meaningful stakeholder involvement. Tax-exempt nonprofit hospitals face additional hurdles, both cultural and legal, but are continually finding new ways to serve their communities and collaborate with for-profit businesses in creative ways.

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Kate McDonald
Partner
Office: Washington, DC
Years at Firm: 6

What is your favorite part about practicing health care law at McDermott? 

The health care regulatory work we do is cutting edge. From the largest health care companies to the smallest start-ups, our clients tend to be highly sophisticated and they come to us with high stakes questions that have no easy answers. We help clients navigate a complex web of health care regulations to implement innovative business models or bend the cost curve. The work I do is intellectually challenging and I love partnering with my crazy smart colleagues to solve problems. This is what keeps me coming back to work day after day.

What is the biggest opportunity and greatest challenge facing clients in your area of focus today? 

There is so much innovation occurring in the health care market today, and in particular in the managed care industry. Health insurers are partnering with an increasingly diverse set of business partners in an effort to provide higher quality care more efficiently, while actually keeping people healthier and improving their experience in the health care system – both of which inure to the benefit of both health insurers and consumers. While health care payors are at a critical intersection and have a unique opportunity to influence changes in the system, figuring out the best way to do that is also the greatest challenge for these companies. Health care is really complex – there is no magic bullet or easy solution, but I am optimistic that some of the innovations that shake out of this transformative time will have lasting and beneficial impacts.

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Mara McDermott
Vice President, McDermott+Consulting
Focus Area: Policy, Lobbying and Advocacy Strategies
Years at McDermott+Consulting: 1

What is your favorite part about your health policy work at McDermott+Consulting? 

My favorite part about working at McDermott+Consulting is the entrepreneurial spirit of the firm. Since arriving at the firm a year ago we have tested and implemented so many new ideas to better serve our clients at an incredibly fast pace. We have established a weekly Check Up article series to provide health policy updates from Washington, DC, started our Policy Breakfast Series for clients and built a new advocacy coalition to influence policy in Washington, DC, just to name a few. The firm is constantly encouraging and embracing innovation to improve client service.

What is the biggest opportunity and greatest challenge facing clients in your area of focus today? 

I help clients engage with Congress and the Administration on health care policy issues pertaining to provider payment. Right now, we see a lot of opportunity in the physician payment space, working with this Administration to define the next steps in the movement from volume to value. This includes opportunities around new delivery models, such as Direct Contracting and Primary Care First, recently announced Administrative initiatives.

The greatest challenge has been the pace of significant changes in the regulatory and policy space. The Administration and Congress have both been busy on a host of proposals that have the potential to significantly disrupt the health care industry. From surprise billing proposals on Capitol Hill to the Medicare Part D rebate rule, keeping up with those changes and engaging to influence their future has been a challenge we have eagerly embraced on behalf of our clients.

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The life sciences marketplace has been ripe for collaboration for the past decade, but new players, new technologies and new regulations are changing the space. Traditional life sciences companies are working together in new and exciting ways, bringing a variety of deal structures and new complexities into the landscape. Our Collaborative Transformation podcast episode “Driving the Deal: Life Sciences Partnership Opportunities, Pitfalls and Impact” with Emmanuelle Trombe and Gary Howes explores these issues in depth. Below are key takeaways from the episode, which you can listen to in full here.

It’s not just new players changing the space—it’s new approaches by traditional players. “It’s not only about pharma and biotech,” Trombe said. “We are seeing collaboration with health care players such as payers, insurers and providers.” Technology companies are also entering the space, bringing financial and philanthropic investments to the table. “People are still trying to do the same things, but they’re getting there in slightly different ways,” Howes said. Collaborations are also shifting from exclusive collaborations to more open collaborations, where partners are more closely involved in the product lifecycle, co-developing products and sharing technology, data and profits.

Bridging the gap between different industry cultures is crucial to building a successful collaboration. Product lifecycles and regulatory regimes vary across industries, but the gap between technology and health care/life sciences is particularly broad. “Life sciences health care companies looking at a lifecycle for their product is something like 20-odd years. That’s not the model that pure tech companies are used to,” Howes said. “There has to be some sort of realignment, so that both parties on either side of the collaboration understand each other’s business enough to make them a success.”

Data drives efficiency and efficacy in treatments, but the regulatory environment continues to present challenges to using it. Data collection is restricted in most countries, particularly for pharmaceutical companies and insurers, which makes it challenging to structure deals around data. Data regulations such as GDPR “could be a hurdle for the development of digital therapeutics, because they limit the ability to use the data collected in a meaningful fashion,” Trombe said. Overcoming these hurdles will be crucial to unlocking the potential solutions in medical data.…
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Megan Rooney
Partner
Office: Chicago
Years at Firm: 13

What is your favorite part about practicing health care law at McDermott? 

The team, the team, the team! It’s a pleasure to work with colleagues who have deep substantive expertise, prioritize client service, and are good human beings. As a healthcare M&A attorney, I am responsible for leading large teams of attorneys, including a variety of subspecialists, to drive efficient and effective outcomes and achieve business goals. I love knowing that, in nearly every instance, when an issue arises we have the specific expertise to handle it and there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

What is the biggest opportunity facing clients in your area of focus today? 

Our hospital and health system clients have a tremendous opportunity to improve the delivery of patient care, expand services provided to their communities and defend against the challenge of declining reimbursement through strategic partnerships. In addition to traditional hospital and health system M&A, our hospital and health system clients are increasingly pursuing Collaborative Transformations – that is, partnerships with non-traditional health care players. A successful Collaborative Transformation takes cultural integration between non-traditional partners, incorporating new technologies into health care regulatory compliance structures, and so much more.

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