Overview
Maynard Nexsen advises clients in all aspects of the senior living and long-term care industries. No matter what role we serve, we focus on helping our clients achieve and maintain the best practices in operations, finance and legal compliance so they can fulfill their primary mission, providing excellent services to residents and their families.
Project Development and Finance
Maynard Nexsen represents clients from start to finish in developing senior living and long-term care facilities, including independent living units, assisted living units, memory care units, skilled nursing beds and continuing care retirement communities that contain some or all of these units. This work involves all aspects of project development, from architectural and construction contracts to appropriate due diligence to placed-in-service date. In addition to new construction or expansion, we represent clients in acquiring existing facilities.
Our attorneys also represent financial industry clients in providing construction, bridge, or permanent financing for senior living and long-term care facilities, whether new construction, expansion, or acquisition of existing facilities. Our experience includes tax-exempt bonds, conventional bank financing and debt or equity investment by private firms, and whether representing borrowers or lenders, we have extensive experience in negotiating key terms, such as financial covenants, reporting requirements, collateral packages, and appropriate remedies if a project encounters financial or operational distress. In all of these projects, we assist clients with all necessary regulatory approval and licensure.
Corporate Matters and Operational Support
Our senior living and long-term care clients call on us for advice in all aspects of operations, including general corporate services, entity selection and organization, tax-related issues, corporate governance, residency agreements, resident admission and/or eviction, disposition of resident refunds and deposits, service contracts, vendor agreements, right-to-die issues, estate claims, and contract disputes. We have provided extensive advice in these areas to communities when negotiating or establishing new arrangements, ensuring compliance with existing arrangements, or resolving issues with residents, their families, regulators and other third parties.
Regulatory Compliance
Maynard Nexsen represents senior living and long-term care clients in a wide range of regulatory matters, including certificate of need issues; licensure processes for new facilities or changes of ownership; survey, accreditation and certification processes; regulatory compliance with applicable state and federal law (e.g., the Federal Anti-Kickback law and the Civil Monetary Penalties law); HIPAA issues; Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurer issues; and license revocation and appeal procedures. We also assist clients with corporate training on important regulatory compliance issues and with the development or review of effective compliance programs. Our attorneys routinely conduct workshops concerning best practices that can help minimize or avoid the potential for mediation, arbitration, litigation, government investigations or other costly proceedings that ultimately consume resources and distract attention from the core purpose of senior living and long-term care facilities, serving residents and their families.
Labor and Employment
Maynard Nexsen’s Labor & Employment Law Practice is among the largest and most experienced in the Southeast. Devoted exclusively to the representation of management in all aspects of labor and employment law, our Labor & Employment Group regularly counsels employers regarding compliance with federal and state employment laws as well as federal and state immigration laws in order to provide comprehensive guidance to clients in these ever-changing areas. In addition, our Labor & Employment Practice offers a variety of preventive counseling and compliance assistance and offers employment handbook and collective bargaining reviews, equal employment, wage and hour and other employment law compliance audits, and investigations of grievances and complaints, including complaints of sexual or other harassment. We regularly defend management in virtually all types of employment litigation and arbitration and try cases in both state and federal courts and before arbitrators on both a regional and national basis.
Employee Benefits
Maynard Nexsen has an extensive Practice in the employee benefits area, assisting clients with all aspects of employee benefit and executive compensation plans and programs under the Internal Revenue Code and ERISA, including issues that may arise under state law or federal securities laws. We commonly assist clients in the drafting, implementation, administration, and termination of all types of qualified plans and seek determination letters from the Internal Revenue Service and advisory opinions from the Department of Labor on behalf of clients and their plans. Where applicable, we advise clients on prohibited transaction issues related to qualified plans. We regularly advise clients on compliance with the requirements under the Internal Revenue Code, COBRA, HIPAA and other applicable federal and state law requirements, including related reporting requirements, and we advise clients regarding submission of requests for relief under the various correction programs available from the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Labor. When necessary, we deal directly with governmental agencies on our clients’ behalf.
Litigation and Dispute Resolution
Maynard Nexsen’s Litigation Group has extensive, nationwide experience in the issues that confront the senior living and long-term care industries, including alleged elder abuse, professional liability claims, insurance coverage issues, proceedings relating to regulatory compliance, licensure revocation and reinstatement, and general commercial disputes. We also have extensive experience representing clients in connection with government investigations, enforcement actions, and criminal prosecutions arising out of reimbursement and other regulatory issues. Always cognizant of cost and risk, our firm works closely with clients, and their insurers, where applicable, to determine the optimum forum and process for successfully resolving each dispute, whether through arbitration, mediation, litigation, or negotiated resolution.
Governmental Affairs
Maynard Nexsen represents clients and their interests before the United States Congress and state legislatures, as well as administrative agencies, boards, and commissions at the federal, state, and local levels. The firm's services include drafting legislation and advising clients on pending legislation that may affect their interests; monitoring, analyzing and responding to proposed regulations and administrative rules; lobbying executive branches, legislators, staff, and other organizations regarding clients’ interests; and testifying on behalf of clients in legislative committee meetings, hearings, and negotiations.
Depth and Experience When It Counts
Our Senior Living & Long-Term Care Group works in concert with the firm’s creditors’ rights and bankruptcy attorneys to provide comprehensive representation in connection with projects that encounter financial distress. We have extensive experience with these issues and can customize our team and the scope of our representation to align with the client’s objectives, whether it involves renegotiating covenants, restructuring debt, exercising remedies, and, where necessary, protecting a client’s rights in a bankruptcy proceeding. In recent years, we served as debtor’s counsel for a continuing care retirement community with substantial bond debt that emerged successfully from bankruptcy by negotiating terms with its creditors in order to continue serving senior residents in the hands of a new owner. In other cases, we have succeeded in obtaining waivers from bondholders for financial covenant defaults or other arrangements that enabled debtor facilities to avoid crippling remedial actions.
With You Wherever You Go
Maynard Nexsen regularly represents clients nationally and internationally, and we are well-positioned to assist senior living and long-term care clients throughout the United States. Where appropriate and in the client’s best interest, our attorneys work in concert with Lex Mundi and/or Southern Law Network firms (or other local counsel) to provide our clients with the best possible representation in other jurisdictions in the most efficient manner.