Deb Stern advises healthcare providers and organizations facing enforcement actions, reimbursement disputes, and government investigations involving significant financial and operational exposure. She represents clients from initial audits and investigations through administrative proceedings and litigation.
Deb also serves as outside counsel to healthcare organizations, regularly advising on regulatory compliance and operational risk.
Deb’s practice focuses on fraud and abuse enforcement, audits, licensure and survey issues. Clients turn to her for counsel on adverse actions by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), other state and federal enforcement authorities, and payers. She advises on Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, audits, and appeals; compliance with the Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute, as well as False Claims Act exposure; Certificate of Need (CON); and healthcare privacy laws, including HIPAA and Part 2.
Her clients include hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), physician practices, behavioral health providers, nursing homes, adult care homes, home health and hospice agencies, as well as individual providers.
Deb serves as an adjunct law professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where she teaches courses on healthcare compliance in the law school’s Health Care Compliance Certificate Program. She is active in the North Carolina Society of Health Care Attorneys, serving on its board of directors and multiple committees.
Early in her career, Deb developed her litigation skills representing indigent clients in court as an attorney at legal services organizations in New York. She maintains an active pro bono practice at Parker Poe.
Deb earned her law degree from Temple University Beasley School of Law, where she served as executive editor of the Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review. She is Swiss-American and fluent in German.