Skip to Main Content
Services Talent Knowledge
Site Search
Menu

RobertPortin

Partner

"What I enjoy most about practicing law is anticipating legal and business issues and devising the most efficient, cost-effective strategies to help clients address them."

Overview

Biography

Robert primarily concentrates his practice on health law, representing ambulatory-surgery centers, hospices, long-term care facilities, hospitals, physicians, and physician groups in health care regulatory and transactional matters. He has extensive experience handling issues ranging from fraud and abuse to the withholding of treatment, defending Medicare and other payer audits, structuring health-care joint ventures, defending professional disciplinary actions, and representing financially troubled health care providers. He has also served on ethics committees for two institutional providers.

Robert also represents health care providers, businesses, and individuals in a wide array of contract, business, and corporate-law matters. He regularly counsels these clients, supervises their interests, and advises them on negotiations. Robert also handles structuring and negotiating acquisition, finance, commercial-lease, joint-venture, license, and other commercial transactions.

Bar Associations

  • Bar Association of Erie County
  • New York State Bar Association

Selected Memberships & Affiliations

  • American Health Lawyers Association, Life Member
Experience

Representative Experience

  • Served as lead attorney in numerous joint venture, acquisition, and consolidation transactions involving health care providers, including sophisticated Stark and anti-Kickback Law compliance analysis.
  • Represented physicians and physician groups in successful challenges to Medicare and private payor audits frequently requiring detailed understanding of CPT coding and applicable billing rules and guidance.
  • Led a successful defense of Office of Professional Medical Conduct and Education Department investigations and proceedings involving physicians, nurse practitioners, and other health providers.
  • Structured and negotiated physician and other provider affiliations with hospitals, administrative-service arrangements involving providers, purchases and sales of medical practices, consulting and employment agreements, and a wide array of other health care contracts.
  • Structured medical facility development transactions involving CON process and compliance with corporate practice of medicine and fee-splitting rules.
  • Handled large private acquisitions of publicly traded nursing home chain facilities in Illinois and Texas, including negotiating three-tiered financing for transactions.
  • Led a successful arbitration against Medicaid, resulting in $2 million in recovery plus attorneys’ fees for a nursing-home owner.
  • Successfully obtained a reversal of a malpractice insurer decision to terminate an orthopedic surgeon’s coverage.
  • Challenged a Department of Health interpretation of payment rules for a diagnostic-imaging provider, resulting in the change of Medicaid rules for the payment of professional-component claims.
  • Represented medical practices in the successful defense of OCR investigations alleging HIPAA violations.

Prior Experience

  • Damon Morey LLP, Partner

Selected Community Activities

  • Jewish Family Service of Buffalo & Erie County, Board Member

Selected Honors

  • The Best Lawyers in America®: Corporate Law, 2009–2025; Health Care Law, 2009–2025
  • Selected to Super Lawyers Upstate New York: Health Care, 2011–2019
  • The Best Lawyers in America®: Buffalo "Lawyer of the Year": Health Care, 2014
Knowledge

Selected Speaking Engagements

  • New York State Health Department, “Proposed Medicaid Access Regulations”
  • New York State Task Force, “Life and the Law Regarding the Determination of Death”
  • American Health Lawyers Association, “Nursing Home Restraints”
  • New York State Bar Association, “Rent Escalation Clauses in Commercial Leaks”

Featured Media

Alerts

RAPID Action: NYS Office of Energy Renewable Energy Siting and Transmission Announces Draft Regulations for New Transmission Siting Framework

Alerts

NYSDEC Issues Draft Freshwater Wetlands General Permit

Alerts

USPTO Updates Audit Program

Alerts

NYS DOL Publishes Long-Awaited FAQs on Paid Prenatal Leave Law

Alerts

Update on Massachusetts Pay Transparency Law Disclosures and EEO Reporting Requirements in 2025

Alerts

Massachusetts Employers Required to Provide Job Applicants Notice That Use of a Lie Detector Test Is Unlawful

This site uses cookies to give you the best experience possible on our site and in some cases direct advertisements to you based upon your use of our site.

By clicking [I agree], you are agreeing to our use of cookies. For information on what cookies we use and how to manage our use of cookies, please visit our Privacy Statement.

I AgreeOpt-Out