Dawn Crumel is a special counsel in the Corporate Practice Group in the firm's Washington, D.C. office, focusing on healthcare issues.

Dawn returned to private practice after working for more than 17 years as in-house counsel for academic medical centers and managed care organizations. She has years of hands on experience as a strategic advisor to health care executives, a deep understanding of the complex issues affecting the health care industry, an instinct for practical problem-solving and the ability to offer go-to advice to in-house counsel. Dawn is a member of the board of directors of American Health Lawyers Association and the advisory board of the Bloomberg BNA Health Law Reporter. Areas of Dawn’s expertise include:

Acquisitions/Alliances

Dawn has extensive experience with physician practice acquisitions, having negotiated and closed approximately 60 physician practice acquisitions in one year. She has remained active in this practice area throughout her career, representing both hospitals and physician practices. Dawn’s experience also includes selling hospital-owned pharmacies, acquiring nursing homes and hospitals and structuring health system alliances and affiliations.

Faculty Practice Plans

Dawn advises on structuring faculty practice plans in various types of academic medical center integration models. She consults on physician compensation and physician integration issues, having frequently advised on faculty and physician issues during her tenure as in-house counsel. Dawn also assisted in restructuring academic medical center compliance programs and has educated faculty physicians on billing requirements at academic medical centers.

Residency Programs

Dawn works closely with graduate medical education offices to resolve issues arising from resident education requirements at teaching hospitals and to ensure compliance with accreditation standards. In addition, she has structured arrangements between health systems regarding residency programs and negotiated PATH audit issues regarding the billing for resident services.

Clinical Research

Dawn regularly counsels on clinical research, conflicts of interest in medical research and institutional review board issues and negotiates complex clinical trial agreements. She has written and spoken extensively on conflicts of interest and transparency issues.

Health Information Technology

Dawn negotiates health information technology arrangements for providers. Having negotiated all health IT arrangements while in-house, she understands the importance of mapping out all functionality, licensing, documentation, the cost of enhancements, acceptance testing, payment milestones, downtime and interoperability.

Medical Staff

Dawn drafts medical staff bylaws in compliance with The Joint Commission standards and has deep experience counseling medical staff offices and credentialing committees, conducting fair hearings and advising on the national practitioner data bank reporting.

Dawn served as Vice President and General Counsel at Meritus Health in Maryland, Senior Associate Counsel at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC, Senior Associate General Counsel for Health Affairs at Howard University in Washington, DC and Assistant Counsel at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia, PA.