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Aytan Dahukey is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group in the firm’s Century City Office.

Thursday, January 13 was the last day of the virtual J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference for 2022. And since the conference was virtual, what better topic to start us off today than a consideration of the new Virtual-First trend that surfaced in 2021. We’ll follow that with a dive onto the couch to consider the conference’s mental health offerings and where the behavioral health sector is heading.

Continue Reading Day Four Notes for the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2022

Have you been working out recently? We hope so, for today, Day Three of the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, was definitely a day for heavy lifting.  Got a challenge that seems overwhelming? A problem that’s big enough to totally scare other folks? Do you eat triathlons for lunch? Well, then you’re going to like the Day Three companies. Let’s talk about fixing the huge American diabetes problem, providing better healthcare for Medicaid and dual eligible beneficiaries, and helping people beat cancer.  All that, plus a COVID-19 thought exercise…

Continue Reading Day Three Notes for the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2022

The phrase “whole person health” kept echoing through the virtual hallways during the second day of the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Looking at the whole person – not just separate organs or body systems – may seem obvious and commonsense, but it’s not how our (well planned, highly logical) healthcare system currently is structured.

Continue Reading Day Two Notes for the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2022

For those of you who know me, I like to have fun with my Zoom backgrounds – choosing photos of interesting scenery or changing them mid-call to reflect my mood or negotiating strategy. Sitting in front of my computer this year for the first day of the 2022 J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference (the 40th annual!), I was lamenting the bland, boring backgrounds of the presenters who were using low-quality stock shots or empty office views until I realized that I was looking at the wrong thing. I really had to look at the shadows and not the backgrounds. There are a LOT of shadows over this year’s J.P. Morgan Conference – COVID-19, the jittery stock market, the future of Medicare Advantage and recent industry changes.

Continue Reading Day One Notes for the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2022

With the uptick in the pace of vaccinations and lifting of restrictions in many states over the past few weeks, a clearer picture of the road ahead is coming into focus.  In a timely discussion, Los Angeles’ Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) hosted healthcare industry leaders to share lessons learned over the past year, what’s here to stay, and what’s on the horizon.  ACG dubbed the panel “Coming up for Air: Healthcare Investing and Growth in 2021 and Beyond,” which featured leaders from various healthcare sectors, including Shane Armstrong, President and General Counsel at American Vision Partners (AVP); John DiGiovanni, Investment Partner at Arsenal Capital; and Rob Mahan, CEO at Exer Urgent Care.  The panel was moderated by Aytan Dahukey, Partner and Private Equity Team Leader at Sheppard Mullin and Adam Abramowitz, Managing Director at Intrepid Investment Bankers.
Continue Reading ACG Panel Paints a Bright Future for Healthcare Investment and Growth

We’ve been talking about telehealth and mental health this week. Here’s both combined in one interesting and highly valued announcement today, followed by several tests – well, 3 million COVID tests a week to be exact, and, speaking of Exact Sciences, developments in the early detection tests for the other major disease that is most feared, cancer.
Continue Reading Day 3 Notes for the 39th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2021

It’s Day 2 of the J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference at its finest – looking closely at healthcare inequities, strategic business shifts and killer robots, all in the same day! (Yes, we did say killer robots and it’s your reward for reading all the way to the end of this article).
Continue Reading Day 2 Notes for the 39th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2021

Sitting in the dark before 6 am in my Los Angeles house with my face lit up by yet another Zoom screen, wearing a stylish combination of sweatpants, dress shirt and last year’s JPM conference badge dangling around my neck for old times’ sake, I wonder at the fact that it’s J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference week again and we are where we are. Quite a year for all of us – the pandemic, the healthcare system’s response to the public health emergency, the ongoing fight for racial justice, the elections, the storming of the Capital – and the subject of healthcare winds its way through all of it – public health, our healthcare system’s stability, strengths and weaknesses, the highly noticeable healthcare inequities, the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and vaccines, healthcare politics and what the new administration will bring as healthcare initiatives.
Continue Reading Day 1 Notes for the 39th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2021

According to a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) study reported in Health Affairs on March 24, 2020, national health care spending reached $3.81 trillion in 2019 and is projected to increase to $4.01 trillion by the end of 2020.  CMS also projects that by 2028, health care spending will reach $6.19 trillion, and will account for 19.7% of GDP, up from 17.7% in 2018.
Continue Reading Venture Capital And Private Equity Investors Take Note: Primary Care May Be The Next Behavioral Health

The Supreme Court issued a long-awaited ruling on April 27, 2020, directed at a more than $12 billion challenge related to the temporary risk corridors program established by the Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”).  Challenges were brought under multiple consolidated cases, Maine Community Health Options v. United States, Moda Health Plan v. United States, Land of Lincoln Mutual Health v. United States, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina v. United States (the “Consolidated Cases”).  In its decision, the Court reversed the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and remanded the case for further proceedings.
Continue Reading Supreme Court Issues Long Awaited Ruling on Affordable Care Act Risk Corridors Program

The Wall Street Journal’s Health Forum convened—virtually—on March 24th during an extraordinary period in global health: the novel coronavirus is threatening populations, overwhelming provider systems, and sending economies into uncharted territory. The interactive event assembled executives, investors, health professionals, industry experts, and leaders in health policy to provide insight into managing the crisis.

Sheppard Mullin attended the Forum and has summarized below some of the outstanding content covered throughout the day.
Continue Reading Highlights From The Wall Street Journal’s Health Forum