As Chair of Shipman’s Health Law Practice Group, Joan W. Feldman delivers strategy, perspective, experience, and business acumen to the firm’s healthcare clients. Joan couples her healthcare experience, insight and legal prowess to serve as outside counsel or general counsel to a wide range of clients, including hospitals, health systems and academic medical centers; specialty hospitals, home health agencies, hospices, behavioral health providers and substance use disorder providers; DME providers; clinical laboratories; attorneys general; and life sciences companies.
With nearly four decades of healthcare cross-disciplinary business and regulatory experience, Joan has an unmatched understanding of the competitive, operational, and regulatory pressures and opportunities facing today’s healthcare organizations. Equally valuable, Joan has earned a reputation among federal and state agency officials as a formidable, capable, effective, and trustworthy healthcare advocate.
Selected among the leading healthcare lawyers in Connecticut and ranked in the prestigious Band 1 by Chambers USA, the preeminent guide to the legal profession, Joan regularly advises her clients on regulatory and corporate day-to-day operational and business issues. As quoted in Chambers USA, “Joan Feldman is great to work with; always approachable and quick to respond. She makes things easy to understand. I also appreciate that she thinks beyond just the legal side and gives advice that fits our business needs."
This has made Joan a leading healthcare lawyer for clients in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and across the country.
Navigating Changing Regulatory Environments
Navigating and responding to changing or new laws and regulations is a continual opportunity for healthcare stakeholders to get it right. Joan emphasizes innovation and problem solving, allowing her clients to receive their desired results.
Joan delivers regular, practical guidance on the rapid-fire regulatory developments emerging from federal and state agencies. She helps her clients understand industry trends better, manage legal challenges, ensure compliance, and mount practical, effective responses to operational and care-delivery challenges. Joan collaborates with her clients to “anticipate and skate to where the puck will be next.” Joan is also the Interim Privacy Officer for UConn Health.
Joan and her team of healthcare regulatory and transactions lawyers provide legal representation to Attorneys General Offices, providing expert guidance on material transactions that may impact public policy, regulatory compliance, or the interests of the state. We assist in navigating complex legal frameworks surrounding acquisitions, mergers, and other significant business dealings, ensuring that these transactions align with the state's laws and regulatory requirements. Our team works closely with Attorneys General to assess the legal, financial, and ethical implications of each transaction, helping to protect public interests and maintain transparency. With a deep understanding of both state and federal regulations, we help facilitate these transactions while minimizing risks and ensuring full legal compliance.
Health Care Regulatory and Administrative Matters
As a highly experienced healthcare lawyer, Joan takes the work out of regulatory compliance for her clients. With a vast knowledge of federal and state laws and regulations, she helps clients develop and implement risk-management programs and guidance that create effective compliance cultures. From conducting Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute audits and analyses to helping align compliance and business strategies, she regularly advises on the full range of matters which also include:
- Certificate of need proceedings and determination requests
- State and federal Licensure and certification matters, including allegations of immediate jeopardy
- Corporate compliance, compliance programs, compliance investigations, and corrective actions
- Corporate governance and best practices
- Government audits and investigations, including false claim and overpayment allegations
- Health information privacy, including HIPAA, data security, breach reporting, and data innovation
- Medical staff governance, discipline, and credentialing
- Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement claims
- Clinical and translational research issues
- Administrative appeals, including rate appeals
Joan is a “go to” certificate of need attorney, effectively representing applicants and intervenors with aplomb.
When civil or criminal litigation arises, Joan collaborates closely with the firm’s trial and appellate teams to develop effective strategies for plaintiffs and defendants, and routinely drafts briefs that present clear, compelling arguments on the most complex of healthcare subjects.
Health Care Transactions and Strategy
Joan also counsels clients at every step of the business lifecycle, including:
- Corporate formation and governance (for-profit and not-for-profit entities)
- Mergers, acquisitions, affiliations, joint ventures, partnerships, physician/hospital strategic alliances, material change transactions and other combinations
- Clinically integrated networks
- New facilities and advising on licensure and reimbursement issues
- Managed care contracting, including risk-sharing arrangements
Community Leader and Health Care Industry Advocate
In addition to her client work, Joan is a recognized thought leader on health law issues. She frequently speaks and writes on subjects of interest to health care providers, including compliance, medical ethics, regulatory and reimbursement matters, and health care fraud.
Navigating Changing Regulatory Environments
Navigating and responding to changing or new laws and regulations is a continual opportunity for healthcare stakeholders to get it right. Joan emphasizes innovation and problem solving, allowing her clients to receive their desired results.
Joan delivers regular, practical guidance on the rapid-fire regulatory developments emerging from federal and state agencies. She helps her clients understand industry trends better, manage legal challenges, ensure compliance, and mount practical, effective responses to operational and care-delivery challenges. Joan collaborates with her clients to “anticipate and skate to where the puck will be next.” Joan is also the Interim Privacy Officer for UConn Health.
Joan and her team of healthcare regulatory and transactions lawyers provide legal representation to Attorneys General Offices, providing expert guidance on material transactions that may impact public policy, regulatory compliance, or the interests of the state. We assist in navigating complex legal frameworks surrounding acquisitions, mergers, and other significant business dealings, ensuring that these transactions align with the state's laws and regulatory requirements. Our team works closely with Attorneys General to assess the legal, financial, and ethical implications of each transaction, helping to protect public interests and maintain transparency. With a deep understanding of both state and federal regulations, we help facilitate these transactions while minimizing risks and ensuring full legal compliance.
Health Care Regulatory and Administrative Matters
As a highly experienced healthcare lawyer, Joan takes the work out of regulatory compliance for her clients. With a vast knowledge of federal and state laws and regulations, she helps clients develop and implement risk-management programs and guidance that create effective compliance cultures. From conducting Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute audits and analyses to helping align compliance and business strategies, she regularly advises on the full range of matters which also include:
- Certificate of need proceedings and determination requests
- State and federal Licensure and certification matters, including allegations of immediate jeopardy
- Corporate compliance, compliance programs, compliance investigations, and corrective actions
- Corporate governance and best practices
- Government audits and investigations, including false claim and overpayment allegations
- Health information privacy, including HIPAA, data security, breach reporting, and data innovation
- Medical staff governance, discipline, and credentialing
- Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement claims
- Clinical and translational research issues
- Administrative appeals, including rate appeals
Joan is a “go to” certificate of need attorney, effectively representing applicants and intervenors with aplomb.
When civil or criminal litigation arises, Joan collaborates closely with the firm’s trial and appellate teams to develop effective strategies for plaintiffs and defendants, and routinely drafts briefs that present clear, compelling arguments on the most complex of healthcare subjects.
Health Care Transactions and Strategy
Joan also counsels clients at every step of the business lifecycle, including:
- Corporate formation and governance (for-profit and not-for-profit entities)
- Mergers, acquisitions, affiliations, joint ventures, partnerships, physician/hospital strategic alliances, material change transactions and other combinations
- Clinically integrated networks
- New facilities and advising on licensure and reimbursement issues
- Managed care contracting, including risk-sharing arrangements
Community Leader and Health Care Industry Advocate
In addition to her client work, Joan is a recognized thought leader on health law issues. She frequently speaks and writes on subjects of interest to health care providers, including compliance, medical ethics, regulatory and reimbursement matters, and health care fraud.
Credentials
Education
- University of Connecticut School of Law, J.D., 1986, with honors
- State University of New York Downstate College of Nursing, B.S.N., 1977, magna cum laude
Bar Admissions
- New York
- Massachusetts
- Connecticut, 1986
Distinctions
- Listed in The Best Lawyers in America®: Health Care Law (2015–2027)
- Listed in Chambers USA, Healthcare (2011–2026), Band 1 (2022-2026)
- Listed as a Connecticut Super Lawyer®: Health Care (2013–2025)
- Listed in Super Lawyers®, Top 50 Women Lawyers in New England (2015–2016)
- Listed in Super Lawyers®, Top 25 Women Lawyers in Connecticut (2015–2016)
- Martindale-Hubbell, AV Preeminent® Rated
- Martindale-Hubbell, Bar Register of Preeminent Women Lawyers, (2011–2012)
Experience
General
Inadequate Medicaid Reimbursement
We represented the Community Health Center Association of Connecticut (CHC/ACT) and other Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in connection with pursuing Medicaid change in scope rate adjustment requests, including pursuing all administrative remedies and any settlement discussions or arbitrations relating to any rate adjustment denial. Connecticut’s Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) provide primary medical, dental, and behavioral health care to 440,000 people annually, and are required to serve all comers irrespective of income level or ability to pay. But many of these FQHCs face dire financial straits because the Connecticut Department of Social Services (DSS), contrary to its avowed mission, has persistently breached its legal duty to pay FQHCs statutorily compliant reimbursement rates for medical, dental, and behavioral healthcare services rendered to Medicaid beneficiaries. With underserved patients’ access to critical services imperiled, the Community Health Center Association of Connecticut (CHC/ACT), has begun the process of taking legal action to address DSS’s longstanding noncompliance. CHC/ACT’s petition seeks a declaratory ruling that federal and state law require DSS regularly to review and adjust FQHCs’ Medicaid rates to account for any changes in these FQHCs’ scope of services – all without the irrelevant analyses, pretextual denials, and undue delay that have characterized this rate-setting process until now. While specifically focused on Connecticut, the petition implicates legal principles of nationwide consequence. A link to CHC/ACT’s Press Release. In May, 2025, an agreement was reached as to the following: A three-year phase in of new rates, reflective of 2023 costs for each health center, beginning on October 1, 2025; a new “change in scope” process; change the appeals process for Federally Qualified Health Centers to align with other Medicaid providers beginning January 1, 2027; and withdrawal of the declaratory ruling request.
