ccoward@vwlawfirm.com-Coward

Carolyn Lloyd Coward is a principal with The Van Winkle Law Firm, where she focuses her practice on health care and labor and employment law. Combining her depth of health care industry knowledge with keen legal insight, she helps to ensure physicians, hospitals, long-term care facilities and other health-care entities comply with federal and state regulations, including HIPAA, fraud and abuse statutes and the Stark Law regarding physician self-referrals. In addition, she counsels health care providers and medical centers to structure business ventures and negotiate and develop employment and shareholder agreements in compliance with government and Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement regulations.

Throughout her career, Coward has represented health care providers in licensing and peer-review matters, reimbursement appeals and business disputes. She is a frequent speaker before legal and health care industry organizations as well as private businesses in North Carolina.

Her professional highlights have included unwinding three major medical practices and successfully negotiating terms without litigation, alternative dispute resolution nor interruption of practice business; representing a physician practice in a reimbursement issue with Medicare, in which the practice was allowed to retain $100,000 in contested fees; and successfully defending a local hospital in U.S. District Court in a multi-million dollar claim commenced by a surgeon seeking reinstatement of medical privileges.