Partner
O'Melveny & Myers LLP
Los Angeles, CA
(213) 430-6191
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David Deaton is a partner in O’Melveny & Myers LLP’s Los Angeles office and a member of the firm’s Health Care and Life Sciences Practice. David’s practice principally focuses on complex regulatory and business matters involving various health care organizations. David regularly advises buyers and sellers in mergers and acquisitions, lenders and borrowers in lending transactions and workouts, health care companies and audit committees in connection with compliance program design and implementation and internal investigations, and health care companies faced with strategic business challenges and opportunities. David’s substantive expertise includes state and federal anti-kickback and self-referral laws, state licensure laws, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement laws, state and federal privacy laws, and laws regulating managed care organizations.
Illustrative Professional Experience
David’s professional accomplishments include a recent victory in defending Alvarado Hospital Medical Center. In U.S. v. Weinbaum, et al., Alvarado and its co-defendants were accused of violating the federal anti-kickback statute by paying bribes, disguised as payments under physician relocation agreements, to local doctors in exchange for patient referrals. After a seven-month jury trial in U.S. District Court and jury deliberations lasting four months, the jury deadlocked and the court declared a mistrial. The government thereafter dismissed all criminal charges against Alvarado and its co-defendants pursuant to a civil settlement.
He also recently represented CCMP Capital Advisors and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners in their attempted $6.4 billion acquisition of Triad Hospitals, Inc., the operator of 54 hospitals and 13 ambulatory surgery centers in 17 states. This attempted going-private transaction made headlines in the Wall Street Journal and was profiled in the “Big Deals” section of the American Lawyer.
David’s other professional accomplishments include:
- Conducting an internal investigation into a biotechnology company’s sales and marketing practices and research activities
- Conducting an internal investigation concerning a hospital-physician joint venture, including recommending and implementing certain corrective action measures
- Advising a pharmaceutical manufacturer in connection with its compliance program, sales and marketing practices, and issues related to compliance with the Medicaid Rebate Program
- Counseling a pharmacy benefits manager concerning compliance with federal and state regulatory requirements and the recent enforcement landscape affecting pharmacy benefits managers
- Representing a national managed care organization in the disposition of its integrated delivery system, which included a health maintenance organization, a hospital delivery system, and a collection of physician clinics
- Representing a private equity fund in acquiring a dental practice management company
- Representing a private equity fund in acquiring a physician staffing company out of bankruptcy
- Representing a physician group in establishing a multi-disciplinary spine surgery institute
Education
Southern Methodist University, J.D., 1999: magna cum laude; Order of the Coif; Comments Editor, SMU Law Review
University of California at Irvine, B.A., History, 1992