Health and care

Alongside the broader corporate team, we have a specialist team that focuses solely on health and care transactions.

We deliver innovative solutions for a number of national and global corporate clients across the independent health and social care sector.

In addition, we have a large team of experienced lawyers who support on commercial and outsourcing projects for local and national health and care clients across the public and independent sectors.

This team can advise on anything from ‘business-as-usual’ non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), contracts and memoranda of understanding (MoU) to long-term outsourcing arrangements, partnerships and joint ventures for major national projects and commercial transactions.

We advise on the regulation of care provision, helping you meet the standards set by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), product compliance and safety, environmental regulation and health and safety.

Proactive regulatory advice

Much of our advice is proactive, guiding clients on the development of new products and services, entry to the UK market, business restructuring or in respect of ongoing regulatory compliance. We’re regularly asked to advise on CQC registration requirements and processes, medical devices and similar regulations, MHRA regulation and NHS provider licensing.

Regulatory and criminal investigations

We also assist clients when things don’t go to plan, advising and representing them in respect of regulatory and criminal investigations, enforcement action and prosecutions. We work closely with colleagues across the firm including in our corporate and commercial, employment and civil litigation teams.

What we can do for you

• Provide advice on regulatory requirements early in the development of a new product or business structure.
• Provide training on how to deal with inspections by a range of regulators.
• Review contracts to ensure that they protect your business from regulatory liabilities.
• Advise on CQC registration requirements and assist in the process.
• Advise on registration and licensing requirements for medical devices.
• Provide urgent and responsive advice for incidents and investigations.

Our specialist health and care team can help you implement the requirements of data protection legislation. We advise on the day-to-day use of personal data related to employees, patients or other people, through to some of the very sensitive privacy and sharing issues which all organisations in the health sector face.

We have extensive experience advising on privacy issues associated with apps, research projects and sharing across international boundaries. More recently, our work has involved looking at duties and obligations related to cloud-based storage and anonymisation to enable learning to be shared across the health and care sector.

What we can do for you:

• Undertake a thorough review of your information law policies and procedures to make sure you comply with Information Commissioner’s Office guidance and health-specific legislation.
• Assist you in meeting your data protection obligations to specific data subjects, including employees, patients and whistle-blowers.
• Advise on risk areas of proposed data sharing relationships with third parties and how to mitigate these risks through robust diligence and written contracts. This includes advice on undertaking and completing Data Protection Impact Assessments.
• Developing clear policies and agreements on data sharing and anonymisation for wider sharing within the system for learning and research purposes.
• Supporting compliance with the Freedom of Information Act obligations.

We’d also be happy to provide bespoke training to you on any data protection issues that may be useful. This training can be provided in a format that works for you.

The most common types of training that we’re asked to provide include:

• Data protection overview
• Personal data breach training
• Subject access request training
• Sharing data for learning and research training.

We’re an expert team of digital health project lawyers who specialise in advising the health and care sector on its digital procurement requirements. We understand the sector and, working closely with our commercial health and procurement health teams, we’re able to provide holistic legal advice tailored to client needs. We advise and identify the unique risks that arise in the health and care sector and provide mitigation strategies accordingly.

We can advise on:

• Contractual approaches to the procurement of digital solutions in light of Integrated Care Systems (ICS) and the soon to be created International Patient Summary.
• Digital procurements using the Crown Commercial Services (CCS) model contract and various other agreements through existing framework mechanisms including G-Cloud and the Technology Services 3 framework.
• Contractual risk mitigation mechanisms during implementation and incentivised delivery mechanisms.
• Structures and governance frameworks and mechanisms for managing service performance.
• Negotiation strategies.
• Key risks on existing arrangements or close to sign contracts.
• All aspects of negotiating, drafting and finalising contracts that may be required across the digital procurement spectrum.

Our experienced and award winning IP team helps health and care providers and public bodies to protect, commercialise and enforce their intellectual property (IP).

We help them capture and own IP. We help draft collaboration agreements, establish innovation capture schemes, and can assist with the IP elements of complex software projects.

We’re also experts on licensing and commercialising technology.

Intellectual property litigation

Our patent litigation team has worked on complex health and care disputes, from inhalers to HIV drugs. We’ve also helped various health clients with copyright and trade mark disputes.

We work with a wide range of NHS trusts and regulators. From straightforward licences to complex projects and litigation, we’ll tailor our offering to deliver the service you need.

Our clients include both IT suppliers and private and public sector customers of IT systems. We understand the financial risks and business disruption involved in IT projects. We work to manage these risks and maximise your prospects of success, whatever your objective.

Our specialist health litigation lawyers provide comprehensive support and advice on issues involving litigation and other forms of dispute resolution. We have deep and broad expertise, ranging from providing support to put distressed IT projects back on track, through to advising on step-in rights, termination and exit strategies where projects can't be rescued.

We’ll work with you to identify the parties’ commercial interests in a dispute and then find creative ways to deliver solutions aligned as far as possible to each of those interests. We can help you keep a troubled project on track.

We offer a range of advice including:

• Advice on liability for project delays and changes to project scope. We recommend the strategic utilisation of contractual mechanisms such as relief notices, invoice dispute notices and change control notices to protect your position where the customer’s requirements change post-contract.
• Strategic advice in relation to liabilities of third parties, such as third-party contractors engaged to rescue the project.
• Advice on alternative dispute resolution, breach of warranty, injunctions, breach of restrictive covenants and fraud and misrepresentation claims.

We have an integrated team of employment lawyers and HR consultants, who can advise on the full breadth of people needs for health and care organisations.

Employment law for health and care

Our employment law team provides comprehensive legal support, from advising on day-to-day employment issues such as contracts, staff management and HR policies, to handling more complex matters like employment disputes, tribunal claims and the implications of mergers and acquisitions.

HR services

Working in tandem with our employment lawyers is our HR services team, which offers a complete package of support designed specifically for independent health and social care providers.

This includes advising on matters such as workforce planning, dealing with complex grievances and disciplinaries, managing allegations against staff, team restructures, organisational development, TUPE transfers and indemnities on outsourcing, and exit agreements.

Support also includes HR audits to ensure compliance with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), bespoke and off-the shelf-training for all levels of staff, and developing HR policies.

Employment law services for health and care HR services for health and care

We’ll support you and tailor our service to meet your needs. We recognise that the key to doing this is over a sustained period. Here are some examples of how we can add value and specific ways that we’ll create value for you.

Instant In-house

We appreciate that you may need to resource your legal support in an innovative way. Our Instant In-house package may be of interest to you, as we can act as your extended in-house team.

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Health and Care Connect

Our forum brings together decision-makers and like-minded people from the independent health and social care sector to discuss the most pressing topics, learn from each other and create new partnership opportunities.

We have delivered regular legal, sector-specific and regional updates, roundtables and events in collaboration with partners, which include funders and real estate consultancies. Topics have included managing the risks of modern slavery in care, regulatory issues regarding digital channels, AI and healthcare apps, and navigating the CQC’s single assessment framework.

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Shared Insights

Using our experience of being deeply embedded within the NHS, we pass on learnings to trusts and other providers via our regular Shared Insights webinar programme, which we often host in partnership with senior professionals and clients. Previous sessions have covered:

• Learning the lessons from national inquiries
• Focus on the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF)
• Complex medical treatment decisions for patients with mental disorder.

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Mock inquests

Running annually, this virtual training course provides essential knowledge and tools for any organisation or clinician with the potential to be involved in an inquest at a coroner’s court.

The course is made up of both live and on-demand content, including insights, lectures and mock inquest scenarios.

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Maternity services resource hub

We have created a set of resources aimed at supporting quality improvement work already underway in maternity units across the country. These span services including advisory and inquest; governance and regulatory; clinical negligence claims; employment and workforce; public law, data sharing and disclosure; and risk management and patient safety.

The toolkit has been developed by our specialist maternity team, which has extensive experience of conducting high-profile maternity inquests on behalf of NHS trusts.

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Training and resources

Clients have access to our wide range of training resources through our general seminar and webinar programme, which is complemented by on-demand legal updates and training videos.

We also provide bespoke training on areas that directly your business, which can be delivered virtually and in-person.

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Ad hoc advice/helpline

We appreciate the need to have a 'sounding board' for legal issues and matters being dealt with in-house. We encourage early engagement with our clients and find that this avoids problems later down the line.

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Supporting government healthcare agenda

We have been a primary thought leader advising on the new government’s approach to healthcare. Our specialists have spoken on panel sessions covering subjects such as accountability for integrated care systems at the NHS Confederation’s ICS Network National Conference.

We supported NHS Confederation in its various submissions to government regarding the 10-Year Health Plan.

Roundtables

We regularly bring public and private sector leaders together at roundtables covering key topics in health and care. We partnered with the Department for Health and Social Care, and the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, for a discussion on how to effectively implement NHS service reconfiguration.

Other roundtable series have explored various issues affecting the future of care, the future of AI in healthcare, and the potential for expanding NHS private patient units.

Delivering healthcare

Partnering with NHS Providers, we co-authored the Provider collaboration: A practical guide to lawful, well-governed collaboratives report, outlining the legal framework in which public and private providers can work closer together.

In addition, we worked with the NHS Transformation Unit to publish the Collaborative Care: Creating Value from Scale guide to coincide with the NHS Providers annual conference in November 2024.

Thought leadership

We've authored and contributed to industry reports that aim to address healthcare challenges and opportunities. In the Opportunities for collaboration between the UK and UAE in cancer care white paper, we advised on legal and regulatory hurdles to effective cross-border data-sharing, which is vital to harnessing AI and emerging technologies in healthcare.