Independent Health

With 70 years of experience in healthcare, we’re the market leaders in providing expert corporate, commercial, and regulatory legal advice to independent healthcare providers. Our expert team has helped over 50% of independent health and social care providers in the UK to grow their business, and deliver high-quality patient and service user care.

Overview

We understand the challenges facing independent healthcare providers, from structural changes and consolidation/new entrants, to increased CQC scrutiny on patient care, to cultural change affecting the management of the workforce and care of patients.

Offering tailored solutions that ensure compliance and sustainable growth, we provide legal, regulatory, and commercial advice, and support with mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and commercial contracts. Our expertise extends to data protection, information governance, clinical negligence, medical malpractice and employment, pensions and immigration law.

We anticipate legal and regulatory changes in the healthcare industry, and translate them into innovative solutions for our clients. Our expert team are pioneers in healthcare law, offering creative advice to our clients, and working in such a seamlessly fluent way with them that they find it hard to tell where their team ends and ours begins.

We provide strategic regulatory and legal advice at board level, considering the interface between independent health providers and the NHS, regulators, and commissioners/insurers to manage reputational risk.

Featured experience

  • Advising a leading private healthcare provider on the successful appeal of an Employment Tribunal (ET) award of lifelong losses (c.£1 million) to an able-bodied medical consultant in a whistleblowing claim. We were brought in at the appeal stage to replace previous legal advisers.
  • Advising on the disposal of the Elysium Healthcare group by its private equity owner, BC Partners, to Ramsay Health, including preparing the property-related provisions of the legal fact book provided to potential bidders, certifying titles to a portfolio of more than 80 care homes (valued at c.£700m), and negotiating the property-related warranties and disclosures.
  • Advising Flexicare, an international manufacturer and supplier of medical devices, in relation to its acquisition of Clement Clarke, a medical device engineering company from the Swiss-listed Haag-Streit Group following a competitive auction process.
  • Representing GVV Kommunal and Viersen Hospital, a hospital in Germany which provides healthcare services to UK armed forces families. We defeated a £5-10 million contribution claim at the Supreme Court and changed the law on contribution claims after arguing that German law should apply to the contribution claim because it provided the hospital with a complete limitation defence.

Client testimonials

What our clients say

  • The team at DAC Beachcroft are very knowledgeable, approachable and good at keeping us up to speed.

    Chambers and Partners UK 2023 Edition, Healthcare client UK

  • They have good strength in depth and they're very commercially aware.

    Chambers and Partners UK 2023 Edition, Healthcare client UK

  • They're extremely responsive and realistically manage expectations.

    Chambers and Partners UK 2023 Edition, Healthcare client UK

Independent Health key contacts

Who we are

Why choose DAC Beachcroft?

We’re a broad-based commercial firm serving a wide range of sectors with a strong heritage in insurance,
health and real estate. We combine excellent legal skills and cutting-edge delivery expertise to design
solutions that fit the needs of our clients – often involving clever uses of technology.