© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Brooks Igo
Staff Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(June 20)—Jones Day has beefed up its health care and life sciences practices with the addition of Todd Kelly to the Dallas office. He leaves Norton Rose Fulbright (formerly Fulbright & Jaworski), where he had been since 1993.
After he was contacted by Jones Day, Kelly said he took a closer look at the firm’s health care practice and was impressed by recent hires in D.C. and Atlanta that demonstrated a commitment to the practice. He thought there was an opportunity to help fill a need in Texas.
“Given the profound changes shaking the industry, I’m sure our health care and life sciences clients will be as delighted as I am that Todd has chosen to join us,” Pat Villareal, partner-in-charge of Jones Day’s Dallas office, said in a statement.
The 1988 SMU Dedman School of Law graduate said that among the most significant legal challenges facing his clients now and in the year ahead are staying compliant and financially viable at the same time, compliance with increasing pace of regulation and figuring out efficient ways to participate in the new care models envisioned by the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
As ACA implementation nears, it is fair to ask whether Texas businesses are ready.
“Texas businesses are more ready than I expected them to be,” he said. “Employers have rolled up their sleeves in an effort to figure out what they need to do to be compliant.”
However, he cautions, “there is still much work to be done by governmental agencies and employers alike.”
Kelly, who focuses his practice on health care transactions, also predicts that the ACA, which requires significant legal interpretation, will drive continued consolidation, particularly among hospitals, doctors and other organizations looking to provide care on a combined or integrated basis.
Besides ACA, Kelly says another issue that has his attention is what healthcare is going to do with the increasing amount of data generated about people, disease states and treatment programs.
“There is a tremendous number of data points in healthcare,” he said. “We are just now figuring out how to manage and interpret the data to use it in a clinically productive way. There’s a lot of promise.”
Kelly points to Baylor Jack and Jane Hamilton Heart & Vascular Hospital, which opened in 2002 as the first North Texas hospital dedicated solely to the care and treatment of heart and vascular patients, as one of the most important deals he has worked on in his career.
“It was both an innovative and effective way to bring a hospital system and doctors together in a joint venture that really advanced the state of care and opportunities to deliver care in a way that they viewed as consistent with their mission,” he said.
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