The First Healthcare Compliance team aspires to excellence in healthcare compliance education, and we’re honored to serve as a trusted resource for thousands of compliance professionals, healthcare administrators, providers, and business associates throughout the United States. Our growing Editorial Council provides collaborative expertise in a broad range of complex topics. Please join us in welcoming our two newest members of this impressive Editorial Council.

Lauren Moak Russell

Lauren specializes in the representation of employers on a range of issues relating to compliance with local, state, and federal labor and employment laws and constitutional provisions.  She provides compassionate and responsive counsel, targeted at achieving client goals while minimizing cost and risk.

Lauren emphasizes client counseling—on issues ranging from wage and hour compliance, to workplace training and investigations, to effective employee terminations—with the goal of avoiding litigation before it begins.  Her counseling practice includes handbook revisions, effective policy implementation, and on-site training on legal compliance.

Lauren has developed and conducts specialized in-house training for emerging legal issues including the pregnancy, reproductive rights, and family care provisions of the Delaware Discrimination in Employment Act.  One of her current programs outlines the complexities of the #MeToo movement and offers executives essential information on harassment avoidance and modifying corporate culture.  Lauren also conducts high-level investigations of discrimination and harassment on behalf of employers.

When litigation becomes necessary, Lauren is a dedicated advocate, aggressively pursuing her clients’ best interests and providing clear guidance at each stage of the proceeding.  Lauren has litigated a wide variety of employment-related matters to successful resolutions, including employment discrimination, non-competition, and constitutional law cases. Lauren has experience in each of Delaware’s state and federal courts, as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Lauren also regularly assists clients in administrative proceedings before state and federal administrative agencies, including the EEOC, the Delaware Office of Anti-Discrimination, and the Delaware Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

Elizabeth Sullivan

Liz is Chair of McDonald Hopkins’ national Healthcare Practice Group and a member of the firm’s Board of Directors. She began her legal career in the Healthcare Practice group at McDonald Hopkins and later served as an attorney in the legal department at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation before returning to McDonald Hopkins as a member.

While at the Cleveland Clinic, Liz provided regulatory advice and transactional guidance to various service lines, including the clinical laboratory, professional pathology, imaging, transplant, and remote and distance health teams.  Over the course of her career, Liz has assisted various types of healthcare providers, including clinical laboratories, hospitals, physician specialty groups, telehealth providers, transplant centers, and surgery centers.

Liz has experience providing regulatory, licensing, compliance, reimbursement, contractual, and corporate guidance to clients. She has advised clients on state professional licensure laws, CLIA standards, state laboratory laws, government and private payor reimbursement policies and billing rules, federal and state fraud and abuse rules and regulations, state telehealth laws, and HIPAA rules and regulations. She has provided assistance to entities during licensure and accreditation surveys, government investigations, and through payor audits and disputes.

In addition to providing regulatory guidance to clients, Liz is also knowledgeable in evaluating how a business opportunity or arrangement implicates a provider’s unique regulatory framework.  Liz has counseled clients not only on the regulatory aspects of an arrangement as described above, but she is also experienced in reviewing and negotiating relevant contractual and legal documentation in connection with contemplated business arrangements.

Liz earned a J.D. and Certificate of Advanced Studies in Health Law from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, an M.A. in Bioethics and a B.A., cum laude, in Political Science from Case Western Reserve University.