Overview
Lawrence Vernaglia is a partner and health care lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP where he is the Department Chair for the firm’s Industry Teams Department, responsible for overall strategy and leadership across all industry teams. Prior to that, he served for eight years as chair of the firm’s Health Care Industry Team. Lawrence represents hospitals, health systems and academic medical centers, and a variety of other health care providers. Lawrence's practice involves regulatory and transactional matters, including Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement compliance advice and appeals; mergers, acquisitions and financings; state regulatory issues including licensing, change of ownership, and CoN/DoN; survey/certification appeals; fraud & abuse/Stark law analyses; managed care contracting; and general corporate and business planning in health care. He serves as Outside Policy Counsel for the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association. He runs strategic planning programs for senior management and governing boards.
Professional Memberships
Lawrence teaches Hospital Law at Boston University School of Law. He is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board of the Boston University School of Public Health. He is involved with several not-for-profit organizations as a board member and legal advisor. He has been a co-chair of the Health Care Compliance Association’s (HCCN) northeast regional annual meeting for the past two decades.
He has served on the editorial boards of several professional journals, including The Report on Medicare Compliance. He has been chair of MCLE's annual comprehensive Health Law Basics program and the advanced Health Law Conference. He is the past co-chair of the Boston Bar Association's Health Law Committee.
Recognition
- Recognized as a 2023 Thomson Reuters Stand-out Lawyer
- Peer Review Rated as AV Preeminent®, the highest performance rating in Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™ system
- Selected to the Massachusetts Super Lawyers® list since its inception, an honor received by only 5% of Massachusetts attorneys
- The Legal 500 recommended him for his work in health care, where clients described him as having “a strong focus advising service providers in major transactions” (2013 - 2016)
- Selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America© in the field of Health Care Law (since 2008)
- Ranked nationally by Chambers USA for his work in health care where they described him as "smart, practical, responsive and creative," highlighting his "very impressive range of skills" (2015 - 2020)
- Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers has ranked him nationally in the practice area of Healthcare: Regulatory & Litigation (2008-2019) and in Massachusetts for his health care practice (2008-2014, 2016-2018, 2020-2022). He also achieved a tier 1 ranking in Massachusetts (2013 - 2019) where they said:
Lawrence Vernaglia is highly respected for his broad and impressive practice, and in recent years has distinguished himself as a go-to name for compliance issues relating to federal healthcare reform. He is described as being ‘of the highest quality in terms of knowledge, responsiveness and business effectiveness.’
- Chambers USA, 2013
"He is a very knowledgeable, approachable and responsible individual." "I think very highly of him, he is a true professional and excellent attorney." "He is highly competent."
- Chambers USA, 2021
Publications and Presentations
Lawrence is the editor of the Clinical Research Compliance Manual (2019), the editor of the two volume treatise Massachusetts Health and Hospital Law Manual (2004, 2009, 2012) and the co-editor of the book Healthcare Compliance Professional’s guide to the False Claims Act (2007). He recently wrote the chapter on U.S. health care law for a treatise covering the health care laws of 16 different nations in the Health Care Law Review. He has published more than 75 other articles and book chapters on various topics in law and medicine in such sources as AHLA's Health Law Digest and Health Lawyers Weekly; Medical Economics; The Journal of Health Care Finance; The Boston Business Journal; and Health Care Policy Report.
He is a regular lecturer on hospital issues, physicians, long term care and other topics in law and medicine. Speeches by Lawrence addressed topics such as: accountable care organizations (ACOs); physician/hospital joint ventures; discount/collection policies for uninsured patients; the Anti-kickback Statute; corporate governance for nonprofits; the board of directors’ role in compliance; reimbursement and managed care and HIPAA.
Lawrence has also facilitated a number of Foley hosted Hot Topics Webinars through the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, the list of which can be viewed here.
Education
- J.D., Boston University School of Law, Boston, Mass. (1994)
- M.P.H., Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Mass. (1994)
- B.A., New College, Sarasota, Florida (1991)
Admissions
Lawrence is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire.