On March 15, 2023, Jackson Walker partner Jeffrey H. Frost lead a webinar for American Health Law Association (AHLA) discussing how to reduce the risk of physician litigation. Jeff was joined by Phillip Yu, MD, Chief Medical Executive of Sutter Medical Center Sacramento.

The webinar covered five key steps to mitigating the risk of potential litigation:

• Avoid the problem through thorough credentialing.
• Ensure communications regarding physicians’ quality and behavior are privileged and immune or protected from liability.
• Effectively communicate with physicians to avoid confrontations.
• Set clear expectations to avoid disputes; and discuss the type of language/clauses to include in agreements in order to help avoid litigation.
• Don’t overreact due to high emotions or public opinion.

Meet Jeff

Jeffrey H. Frost draws on more than 20 years of experience as in-house counsel to advise clients on healthcare regulatory matters, hospital operations, and medical staff issues. As the former Deputy General Counsel at an integrated health network in Northern California, Jeff’s experience includes advising medical staffs, medical groups, and hospitals on a full range of credentialing, privileging, peer review, and quality assurance topics, as well as assisting hospital administration with governmental investigations, fraud and abuse claims, agency complaints, and medical staff hearings.