CATHERINE I. HANSON

Ms. Hanson has over 30 years of experience providing advice and counsel to physicians, medical associations and other health care related individuals and organizations. She has handled a broad array of health care and association matters, utilizing all advocacy strategies from informal discussion, to regulation, legislation and litigation. Most recently, Ms. Hanson has focused on managed care, including the impact of ACOs, new payment models and clinical integration, HIPAA, including the Privacy, Security and Transaction Rules, and evolving physician employment arrangements. Ms. Hanson is the author of numerous publications and a sought after speaker.

Ms. Hanson recently served as vice-president of the American Medical Association’s state and private sector advocacy unit from July 2007 through January 2013. Under her leadership, AMA’s private sector advocacy team developed the National Managed Care Contract and database, the only complete compilation and analysis of every managed care law and regulation in the country. Ms. Hanson also directed the creation of numerous other unique resources for physicians, including how-to manuals on new payment models, ACOs and physician integration strategies. She led the development of AMA’s National Health Insurer Report Card (NHIRC), the first objective look at the claims processing activities of the nation’s largest health insurers. Ms. Hanson’s private sector advocacy team also achieved significant, nationwide physician profiling reforms and improvements in the HIPAA transaction standards necessary to enable payer transparency and physician practice automation.

Ms. Hanson’s state advocacy successes included obtaining National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) support for AMA positions related to critical state ACA implementation/health insurance market reform issues, such as medical loss ratio, rate review, health insurance exchanges, and transparency of coverage facts for consumers, successes that were subsequently reflected in the federal ACA regulations. She led a successful effort that secured National Conference of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL) model bills regulating rental network PPOs and calling for transparency for out-of-network services instead of a ban on balance billing. Last but certainly not least, Ms. Hanson’s team worked with medical associations throughout the country to achieve hundreds of legislative and regulatory victories to preserve medical liability reforms, ensure health insurer transparency, improve public health and safety, enact truth-in-advertising laws and protect the patient-physician relationship.

Prior to her AMA work, Ms. Hanson served as vice-president and general counsel for the California Medical Association from December 1986 through June 2007. Her many CMA accomplishments included an extremely successful advocacy campaign in the courts and before the California Attorney General that resulted in nearly 100 decisions upholding MICRA and otherwise protecting physicians from unfair professional liability exposure, protecting the physician-patient relationship, increasing access to care, reigning in managed care abuses, and ensuring fair peer review, among other issues. Ms. Hanson also led the development and publication of the 4000+ page California Physicians Legal Handbook, a comprehensive health law treatise, which she published annually with her CMA Legal Center staff from 1990-2007. Prior to starting the CMA’s in-house law department, Ms. Hanson was an attorney with the law firm of Hassard Bonnington in San Francisco.

Ms. Hanson is a past president of the California Society for Health Care Attorneys, a past president of the American Society of Medical Association Counsel, a member of the American Health Lawyers Association, and the American Bar Association Health Law Section.

Ms. Hanson is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. She obtained her J.D. degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at University of California, Berkeley. She is a California licensed attorney admitted to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States District Court for the Northern and Southern Districts of California. Ms. Hanson has an AV Martindale Hubbell rating. Ms. Hanson is Of Counsel to the Firm.