A criminal conviction can hugely impact your life by affecting your educational opportunities, personal relationships, and financial situation. The conviction can be specifically serious if you are involved in a profession, where you must be licensed for legally practicing in your state. Even a criminal charge without finding you guilty can have an adverse impact on your career, perhaps ensuing in the suspension of your professional license. Being a licensed professional, if you have been charged with a crime, it’s important for you to consult a practiced attorney as early as possible to prepare for your defense and keep your license.
Types of cases a professional can be charged with
Most common types of criminal charges that can be brought against licensed professionals involve drugs and alcohol offenses. A single charge of alcohol or drug consumption is enough to taint your professional career and reputation, which may even make it hard for you to continue with your practice. Some charges that can be levied against healthcare professionals in criminal offenses include following:
- Driving under the influence of alcohol
- Drug ownership or manufacturing
- Healthcare or insurance scam
- Theft or misuse
- Intoxication assault
- Intoxication killing
In case you’re facing any of these criminal charges, you need to seek advice from a reputed healthcare defense lawyer to discuss about your legal protection.
How are these attorneys helpful?
Healthcare defense attorneys have the best understanding of Medicare issues, grant review, academic medical centers, risk assessments and various types of criminal and administrative cases. Thus, based on the qualification and years of experience in their domain, you can rely on these lawyers to get help in your case. They carefully assess all the merits of your case and take responsibility to handle allegations of fraudulent activities against you; by the state, third parties, former employees or patients. A lawyer for doctors also negotiates on the penalties imposed on professionals or medical institutes for lack of care provided to the patients, overbilling and other such claims.
Finding attorney
While going out in the search of a right attorney, you should not simply hire the first lawyer that comes across you, but understand that he/she should be ethical, modest, intelligent, willing to learn and diligent enough to help you in the case. In order to find best healthcare defense lawyer, you should first ask for recommendations or referrals from your friends, as word-of-mouth suggestions still work best. You can also do an advanced search on the internet, but always remember not to hurriedly opt for any law firm that you see an advertisement of. In case your run a firm dealing in Medicare business, go for a lawyer that has a strong niche in the domain.
No matter how complex your case may be, you can get your allegations legally removed with help of a responsible lawyer for doctors. However, you must make sure that the attorney you choose has enough experience in successfully resolving cases similar to yours.