Healthcare leaders gathered earlier this month at an event hosted by law firm Sheppard Mullin to discuss ongoing regulatory changes under the Trump administration.
The second annual Women in Healthcare Leadership Collaborative (WHLC) leadership summit was held in New York City in early October. WHLC, formed in 2019, is a national initiative that supports women currently in or advancing into leadership positions in healthcare and life sciences. Two Sheppard Mullin partners co-chair WHLC: Chi Huynh and Amy Dilcher.
In the audience this year were about 85 Sheppard Mullin healthcare practice attorneys, clients and other healthcare stakeholders. Topics included data privacy and security, new M&A policies and changes in reimbursement trends.
“AI was, no surprise, a big area of interest,” Dilcher told Fierce Healthcare in an interview with Huynh after the event. “Every organization seems to be struggling with how to navigate that.”
Cost pressures on hospitals are driving teams to look for tools to streamline their work and maximize efficiencies, she said. A big question remains about how to evaluate the tools. Attendees spoke about creating multidisciplinary committees to do so, per Dilcher.
Also discussed were the implications of employees using AI, added Huynh.
“Some of that [inputted] data could be client information, patient information,” she said, “and it’s no longer confidential when you disclose it into the public like that. … Companies need to make their employees aware of that.”
Several developments are impacting the healthcare M&A market, leading to increased regulatory scrutiny. Both the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice now require expanded and detailed reporting under the antiturst-focused Hart–Scott–Rodino Act. Many states across the political aisle have also introduced or updated pre-merger notification laws, per Huynh and Dilcher. This potentially slows down the pace of deals, increases uncertainty and makes them more expensive.
“If a party wants to, for example, close by year-end, which is a popular time to close, they really need to work with their attorneys and specialists at the very beginning to carefully structure their transaction,” Huynh said.
“These state laws give the states the opportunity to take a look independently, without having to rely on the federal government,” Dilcher added, alluding to deals where the federal government may take a more agnostic stance.
Private equity-backed transactions are in a particular spotlight. There is growing concern about their influence on quality and access to care. A week ago, California expanded the authority of its Office of Health Care Affordability to allow the agency to collect data from private equity groups, hedge funds and management services organizations.
“I think there is a concern about the profit motive, potentially, and how that impacts the quality of care,” Dilcher noted.
Telehealth was another timely topic of concern at the WHLC summit. Medicare telehealth waivers and Acute Hospital at Home programs expired on Oct. 1. Sheppard Mullin clients are navigating how to proceed, given that many have already been providing virtual care for a while.
“We think they should just make it a permanent fixture, because a lot of our clients are doing telehealth because they serve patients that are in rural communities,” Dilcher said.
For now, most clients are continuing to offer telehealth, but not submitting claims to government payers so as not to be seen as over-billing. It gets tricky though, Dilcher explained, if a commercial payer contract has a provision that providers must comply with Medicare laws.
With Medicaid eligibility requirements also changing, Sheppard Mullin is monitoring implications for maternal health. “We’ve very concerned that there’s going to be women that are left without coverage,” Huynh said.
In the commercial litigation space, there are currently many disputes related to contracts, Dilcher said. These disputes might be related to rates, coverage, contract breaches or the honoring of tariffs. The summit considered best practices for providers around contracting.
Finally, the rapid pace of regulatory change has healthcare organizations struggling to keep up with financial pressures. Many hospitals are exploring partnerships for new revenue streams to mitigate that challenge, such as joint ventures with health tech vendors or outsourcing revenue cycle management.
“Like partnering with AI software providers, for example, where if you use a certain amount, you get a certain amount of discounts,” Huynh said, “Or forming a joint venture and owning the software; creating the software and owning it with a software provider or something like that; and then that way you get equity.”
Beyond what was discussed at the summit, Dilcher is seeing hospitals looking to hybrid urgent care models. This supports reimbursement as much as it does care access, she noted, so if in a rural area someone comes into the hospital for a lower-acuity condition, they can still be treated in the co-located urgent care.
“We’re seeing all these interesting models that hospitals are thinking about,” Dilcher said.
WHLC was founded because women make up three-quarters of the healthcare workforce, yet only 30% of leadership and board positions are held by women, Dilcher said. A decade ago, that figure was even lower, at 15%. And women of color are even less in such positions. “We’ve made some progress,” Dilcher said, “but there still is a lot of work to do.”
Crucial to WHLC’s philosophy is offering networking opportunities. “When you grow your network, your strong female network, it brings women like myself into leadership positions—because women are giving work to other women,” Huynh said.
The summit is tailored for healthcare leaders committed to supporting women and addressing gender disparities in leadership, with a focus on practical strategies. Anyone can attend for free.