Health industry participants face a wide range of challenges — changing patient populations, mounting healthcare costs and new disruptive technologies from upstart firms — not to mention the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospitals, healthcare professionals and long-term care homes. All these issues add complexity and competition to an already intricate ecosystem.
Within Canada, a paradigm shift in healthcare is on the horizon. Organizations are turning to new models of care and technologies to support and facilitate healthcare delivery amid a lack of funds and a national struggle to contain costs. Industry players must prepare to meet the increasing demands of an aging and growing population in an already overburdened publicly funded healthcare system.
New funding structures and methods of service delivery — including a movement towards a greater reliance on private healthcare providers outside of the government-funded system, telehealth and other digitization processes — are emerging to tackle these increasingly complex (and costly) healthcare issues.
These developments carry a wide range of considerations and legal implications for health industry participants. To help you navigate today’s evolving health ecosystem, we deliver highly strategic and innovative advice to support all facets of the industry’s complex and specialized needs.
How we can help
Our Health Industry team has a deep understanding of Canada’s legislative and regulatory environment, the new technologies driving innovation, and the unique litigation challenges your industry faces and can help your organization remain competitive and compliant in today’s highly regulated landscape.
Leveraging the collective experience and expertise of practice groups from across our firm, we take a “one-firm” approach to legal service delivery to provide you insights into new business and operational opportunities and challenges as well as visibility into issues (you may not be aware of) that can affect the viability of your organization, today and down the road.
Osler is the only firm in Canada to offer a specialized corporate health practice in addition to specialized health industry regulatory and litigation expertise. We have represented hospitals and other health facilities, practitioners, service providers and pharmaceutical companies in litigation involving malpractice, hospital privileges, class actions and more.
On the forefront of health tech
With the insight of our Emerging and High Growth Companies, Technology and Privacy practice groups, we can help you mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities that come with adopting transformative technologies and the digitization of healthcare. Clients turn to us for strategic advice regarding the various drivers disrupting healthcare, such as digital transformation, data management, smart technologies, AI and innovative governance and structuring frameworks that permit new ways of delivering care.