K&L Gates Expands Health Care Practice with Charleston Partner Addition

Charleston - The Charleston office of global law firm K&L Gates LLP has added Stephen D. Bittinger as a partner in the health care practice. He joins the firm from Nexsen Pruet, LLC, and also will practice from K&L Gates’ Washington, D.C., office. 

Bittinger concentrates his practice on health care reimbursement compliance, defense, and litigation, with a focus on government and private payor disputes on behalf of providers, vendors, and manufacturers. He has extensive experience representing medical facilities, medical labs, drug and device manufacturers, home health agencies, large physician practices, and other ancillary service providers in matters including Medicare and Medicaid audits, private payor audits, federal regulatory termination and exclusion proceedings, False Claims Act prosecutions, and health care revenue issues. Bittinger also advises clients on defending and appealing audits by Recovery Audit Contractors, Zone Program Integrity Contractors, and Unified Program Integrity Contractors, and has worked collaboratively with government regulators and health care provider associations across the United States. He has represented many providers with federal agency matters in Washington, D.C., including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Center for Program Integrity (CPI), the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), and the Health Care Fraud division of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Beyond his robust legal practice, Bittinger is the founder and president of Scion Tree, Inc., a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping adoptive families and orphaned children, including advocating for the rights of orphaned children on the legal aspects of adoption and human trafficking.

“We are delighted to be able to add such an impressive and entrepreneurial partner to the Charleston office,” said J. Walker Coleman, managing partner of K&L Gates’ Charleston office. “Stephen will bolster our extraordinary national health care practice in South Carolina and beyond.”

Bittinger’s arrival follows the addition of health care partner Myla Reizen in K&L Gates’ Miami office this February. K&L Gates has welcomed a dozen other new partners and of counsel to the firm during the first several months of 2020, including in the firm’s Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Miami, Melbourne, Paris, Charlotte, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., offices across practices such as corporate, tax, environment, land and natural resources, asset management and investment funds, IP litigation, government contracts, and investigations, enforcement and white collar.

K&L Gates’ health care lawyers counsel clients – including major academic medical centers, tertiary care hospitals, established community and regional health care providers, and international health care businesses – on a variety of state and federal regulatory and compliance issues, investigations, transactions, and litigation.