Bio

Robert Keenan focuses on healthcare regulatory, transactional, and contracting matters. A partner in both our Healthcare practice and Data Security and Privacy practices, Rob represents health industry clients with respect to a broad range of issues. Rob advises health systems, hospitals, academic medical centers, clinical laboratories, home health and hospice providers, pharmacy benefit managers, and physician groups on a wide range of federal and state regulatory matters, with a particular focus on health information privacy and security as well as healthcare fraud and abuse laws, including the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and the Stark Law. Rob also advises hospitals, health systems, academic medical centers and large physician groups concerning regulatory and structuring issues related to physician contracting, including practice acquisitions, professional services arrangements and evolving value-based arrangements. Rob regularly assists clients with the design of Stark Law-compliant physician compensation methodologies, including within group practices. Rob has considerable experience troubleshooting existing arrangements, often finding compliant pathways, and has filed a number Stark Law voluntary disclosures with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services when a Stark-compliant pathway could not be identified. Rob represents health industry clients in transactional matters, including performing healthcare regulatory due diligence in connection with mergers and acquisitions. Rob also advises clinical laboratories regarding CLIA and state law compliance, including in the context of sanction proceedings before the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Rob advises clients on federal and state health information privacy issues and has significant experience representing HIPAA covered entities and business associates, as well as medical device and pharmaceutical companies that encounter HIPAA-related issues. He provides advice regarding covered entity and business associate regulated status, proactive compliance, data use and sharing, incident response and breach reporting, de-identification, and clinical research issues. Rob also advises healthcare providers on insurance-related issues, including contracting, formation of provider-sponsored health plans, and evaluating state regulation of risk-based payment arrangements. Rob served as the Editor of the American Health Law Association’s Health Plans Contracting Handbook, 7th ed. (2015), and served as Co-Editor of the 5th and 6th editions. Rob also spent time in-house at a national health insurance company advising managed care organization clients on various contracting and regulatory issues before returning to King & Spalding. A regular speaker and writer, Rob is ranked as Band 1 for Healthcare in Georgia in Chambers USA Client's Guide to America's Leading Lawyers for Business and also is recognized in recent editions of The Best Lawyers in America and Expert Guides Best of the Best USA. He is a member of the American Health Law Association, the Health Law Section of the American Bar Association, and the State Bar of Georgia, and is a member and past President of the Georgia Academy of Healthcare Attorneys. Rob was named “Lawyer of the Year” for Health Care Law in the 2023 Georgia edition of Best Lawyers.