Hope R. Levy-Biehl

LOS ANGELES - Over the course of more than two decades, Hope R. Levy- Biehl has helped health care organizations navigate the health care regulatory landscape while keeping their business goals in mind.
As a co-chair of the Davis Wright Tremaine LLP health care practice group, she used her knowledge of the regulatory framework to lead a team of attorneys while keeping tabs on both the patient and business side.
"I spend most of my time working collaboratively with health care clients to ensure they can act in a compliant way and fulfill goals," she said. "I've helped clients comply and understand new and evolving laws and it's fulfilling to see them explore alternative care settings."
Her practice made her gravitate toward how to provide acute hospital care at home, how to make the model work and what opportunities there are in operating such programs in California.
She recognized the pandemic played a role in giving rise to new business models in health care, but that institutions were open to the idea before. "As a result of COVID, we had greater visibility into the importance of access to hospital care. Sometimes patients were just too vulnerable for hospital settings and could be better treated at home," she said.
The experience made Levy-Biehl become interested in finding creative solutions to health care delivery outside of hospitals, something she said she hopes to explore for a long time.
"We're still in a public health emergency, so there are a number of state and federal waivers in place that have allowed great flexibility," she said. "In a lot of ways, the providers and patients have benefited from these waivers, but it's an open question which ones will survive the end of the emergency."
Levy-Biehl said she hopes the most successful models will survive.
She has also served as lead regulatory counsel to Verity Health System in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy matter. She provided regulatory support for day-to-day operations and counsel on the sale and wind-down of its five hospitals, including working closely with the California attorney general's office in obtaining approval for the sale.