Health

Legal Advice for health and medical practices, allied health providers and healthcare organisations.

Our award-winning team advises healthcare providers on regulatory compliance, governance, contracts and risk management. We understand the challenges and opportunities in the healthcare industry, and can provide holistic legal and strategic advice to support your organisation's success. Whether you’re a well-established business or a start-up company, we’ll work with you to develop the best commercial strategies and protections for your unique situation. Our services include:

• Advising health, medical and allied health providers on regulatory change, legal reform and compliance. 

• Helping providers respond to operational challenges, manage legal compliance obligations and address risks arising from delivery of health and medical services. 

• Assisting providers responding to regulatory investigations, complaints, coronial inquests and other serious events arising from service delivery. 

• Advising health, medical and allied health businesses on business structuring and restructuring, formalising arrangements between partners, shareholders and directors, and establishing new service offerings and ventures. 

• Drafting, reviewing and negotiating commercial contracts that support health and medical businesses.  

• Helping providers resolve commercial disputes, service disputes and unpaid debts.  

• Advising on disputes between health and medical business partners, shareholders and company directors.  

• Helping health and medical businesses manage privacy risks, including preparing privacy policies, advising on data breaches and health record and information requests, and responding to changing privacy obligations. 

• Protecting and managing intellectual property that supports health and medical businesses. 

• We also advise providers operating in closely related regulated sectors, including NDIS and aged care. 

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who do you act for? 

We act for all types of healthcare and medical professionals such as general practitioners, medical specialists, psychologists and allied health professionals.  

We do not act for patients, or their families.  

• I’ve received a request to release health records – can you help? 

Yes. We regularly advise practitioners who’ve received these kinds of requests. Practitioners understandably want to ensure that a request is valid and that they should comply and are concerned with how to do that while protecting client confidentiality. We can provide this assurance and assist you to comply in a way that honours your obligations to your client. 

• I’ve heard all health businesses need a privacy policy – is that true? 

Yes, all health service organisations must have a privacy policy under the Australian Privacy Act. Policies must be up to date and reflect all legal requirements, which are more complex for health businesses and can change as privacy laws evolve. Our expert privacy team can prepare, review or replace your privacy policy for a fixed fee. Our process is easy: you’ll complete a questionnaire and we’ll send you a robust, compliant privacy policy tailored to your business.  

• The partners in our medical/health business are in a dispute – can you help? 

We regularly act for individuals navigating internal business disputes. We’ll help you understand the legal issues and your options to resolve the matter. We’ll then help you navigate towards your desired outcome, including acting on your behalf in negotiations with other partners (or their legal representatives), allowing you to focus on your patients’ best interests. Many clients fear that involving lawyers will escalate matters, however in our experience, bringing in lawyers can help protect the business, keep everyone focussed on the important issues and expedite a resolution.