Behavioral Health Care
Gjerset & Lorenz lawyers have worked in the behavioral health field since the beginning of their careers. Mr. Gjerset started his career prosecuting cases for the Texas Attorney General against psychiatric hospitals for violations of state anti-kickback laws and represented Texas in national settlements with various psychiatric hospital systems. Since then, Gjerset & Lorenz attorneys have continuously represented acute care facilities with psychiatric units as well as psychiatric and rehabilitative hospitals in almost every facet of their business including sales and acquisitions, regulatory compliance, licensure, administrative actions and the development of operational policies and procedures. Our clients have included lock down facilities for adjudicated minors with psychological diagnoses, residential care facilities for patients with organic brain injuries, partial programs for youth and adults, multiple personality disorder units, and other non-traditional behavioral providers such as wilderness camps for troubled youth and eating disorder clinics.

We have defended our clients from a wide range of regulatory sanctions relating to abuse and neglect actions by state and federal governmental agencies and lawsuits by Advocacy Incorporated and private litigants. Aside from our defense practice, we advise our behavioral health care clients on day to day regulatory compliance issues, risk management, negotiating payor agreements, and business transactions. Over the years our firm has developed working relationships with the heads of the federal and state agencies that regulate our clients, and has developed a strong administrative practice defending our clients from adverse licensure actions and developing plans of correction to respond to statements of deficiencies in a way that limits additional administrative efforts to sanction our clients.

Representative Gjerset & Lorenz experience includes:

• Successfully defended numerous psychiatric hospitals from exclusion from the Medicare program, licensure revocation, and civil penalties following several suicides and numerous abuse and neglect allegations;
• Successfully defended the CEO of a children’s psychiatric hospital for adjudicated youth against allegations of neglect following several staff-patient incidents;
• Worked with state and federal governmental agencies to obtain certification for one of the largest school districts in Texas to become a Psychiatric Provider;
• Successfully defended compulsive gambling treatment centers from adverse audit finding that they received excess government funding;
• Led the divestiture and closure teams of psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric hospital systems including due diligence, development of the transactional documents and obtaining regulatory approval;
• Organized over 50 substance abuse treatment facilities and residential treatment facilities into an association and negotiated contracts for these providers with the State and commercial payors;
• Successfully defended over 25 substance abuse treatment facilities against allegations by a state regulatory agency that these facilities received approximately $30 million in overpayments due to the inclusion of unallowable costs in their cost reports. In the aggregate, our clients paid the State $35,000 to resolve the disputes, and the state agency that made the allegations was disbanded.