Health Law

Health law is the federal, state, and local law, rules, regulations and other jurisprudence among providers, payers and vendors to the health care industry and its patients; and (2) delivery of health care services; all with an emphasis on operations, regulatory and transactional legal issues. Similarly, The Florida Bar defines it as "legal issues involving federal, state, or local law, rules or regulations and health care provider issues, regulation of providers, legal issues regarding relationships between and among providers, legal issues regarding relationships between providers and payors, and legal issues regarding the delivery of health care services." American University's college of law, in health law and policy, divides health law into 4 areas: health care law (focused on treatment), public and population health law (focused on prevention), bioethics, and global health law.

Health Law was first adopted as a separate legal specialty in which attorneys could become "board certified" and in which they could hold themselves out as a "legal specialist" or "legal expert" by The Florida Bar's Board of Legal Specialization in 1995. Later Texas adopted a similar program in 2002 modeling its program after Florida's.

Becoming Board Certified in Health Law can be a challenging process, structured to allow only those attorneys who are most qualified in the area to become certified by the bar or licensing authority. For an example of Florida's requirements, see: https://www.floridabar.org/TFB/TFBResources.nsf/Attachments/98891914D8E18A8B852578E3004D799E/$FILE/Health%20Law%20Cert%20Flyer.pdf?OpenElement

One way in which an attorney in the United States can obtain additional education to practice health law or to use in becoming certified in the specialty of health law, is through one of the Master of Laws (LL.M.) programs that are offered by certain law schools. The LL.M. is considered to be a postgraduate law degree which shows a higher level of course work and study above the basic law degree (J.D. or B.S.L.). Currently, in the United States, there are only 11 law schools with graduate law programs which offer an LL.M. specifically in Health Law. These are: Georgetown University Law Center; Loyola University of Chicago School of Law; DePaul University College of Law; University of Houston Law Center, Hofstra University School of Law; Saint Louis University School of Law; Drake University Law School; Quinnipiac University School of Law; Southern Illinois University School of Law; University of California, Hastings College of the Law; and University of Washington, Seattle-UW School of Law. Some law schools with graduate law programs do offer a general LL.M. with a course emphasis on health law, global health law, public health law, forensic medicine or similar studies.

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