Michael Cook
Michael Cook is a member of the firm in the Healthcare Practice in the firm's Washington, DC office. Mr. Cook advises clients and represents them in Federal and State courts, and before Federal and State administrative agencies. He also assists with agreements and other joint ventures between hospitals and longterm care facilities, health planning matters, and general business advice.
Mr. Cook represents health care entities and companies and their trade associations throughout the United States on regulatory matters, with a special emphasis on representing hospitals and post-acute entities such as nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, CCRCS, home health agencies, and others on matters involving reimbursement under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, licensure and certification issues, HIPAA compliance, corporate compliance, fraud and abuse, regulatory aspects of acquisitions, and integrated networks.
Following law school, Mr. Cook served as an attorney in the Office of General Counsel for the United States Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS"). He was primarily responsible for the handling of major litigation in the Medical Assistance ("Medicaid"), Health Insurance for the Aged and Disabled ("Medicare"), and Aid to Families with Dependent Children programs at the United States District Court, United States Court of Appeals, United States Supreme Court, and Departmental Administrative Hearing levels. Mr. Cook also provided internal legal advice to the Health Care Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and other components of HHS on a number of significant health care and welfare issues. For a three-month period in 1977, Mr. Cook served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney on detail to the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois. Since leaving the government, Mr. Cook has represented health care entities and their trade associations full-time for more than 24 years.
Mr. Cook has lectured extensively to the American Health Lawyers Association, the Healthcare Financial Management Association, the American Health Care Association, the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, the National Subacute Care Association, the Assisted Living Federation of America, the American Hospital Association, the American College of Health Care Administrators, the American Medical Directors Association, other hospital and long-term care associations, and to conferences sponsored by private organizations on the topics of subacute care, managed care contracting for nursing facilities, complying with the privacy rules implementing HIPAA requirements to protect health information, home health agencies, and other ancillary providers, integrating post acute services into the continuum of care, contracts and other joint ventures between hospitals and long-term care facilities, integrated networks and managed care contracting for post acute services, Provider Sponsored Organizations, institutional reimbursement disputes under the Medicaid program, discrimination by payor source in access to long-term care services, diversification for long-term care facilities, survey and certification disputes, fraud and abuse and corporate compliance programs, the Nursing Home Reform provisions of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987, Medicare routine cost limits, and other issues of interest to the health care industry.
Mr. Cook has been included in numerous editions of Who's Who in American Law and Who's Who in America. He has been selected by McKnight's Long-Term Care News as one of the 100 most influential people in long term care during 1996. He has received the highest possible rating from Martindale-Hubbell.