Health care law keeps Shorter busy

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Thomas Shorter saw his legal practice change tremendously with the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

A shareholder with Godfrey & Kahn SC in Madison, Shorter specializes in helping health care systems with their corporate business needs from employment law and contracts to acquisitions and regulatory compliance.

“The ACA put a huge focus on health care costs and really pushed physicians and systems to work together to help bring down costs,” said Shorter, who was introduced to health care law while helping the firm with employment law issues. “It also spurred a lot of transactions whether it’s affiliations, mergers or other agreements as systems try to work together on cost containment.”

The ACA also put into place an entire new set of regulatory issues.

“I spend a lot of time monitoring what’s going on,” Shorter said. “I read industry bulletins, reading about the latest regulatory rules and how they’re being enforced and what different health care systems are doing. Compliance is a big thing. Staying well informed allows me to do a better job for my clients.”

At Godfrey & Kahn, Shorter chairs the health care team, which pulls together not only attorneys who work on health care issues, but also those in other specialties, including real estate, corporate law and anti-trust work to make sure health care clients are getting the right information in a rapidly changing environment.

“When you have all of these transactions going on, other specialties come into play and we need to make sure we have it all covered,” Shorter said.

Shorter isn’t the only attorney who has seen his practice changed by the passage of the ACA. He serves on the American Health Lawyers Board of Directors and said transactional issues are a hot topic.

“Two or three years ago we started dedicating an entire conference to transactional work – dealing with affiliations, mergers and what not,” he said. “There is so much interest out there from other attorneys and they’re dealing with it daily.”

Wisconsin Law Journal: If you weren’t an attorney, what would you do?
Thomas Shorter: An officer in the Coast Guard. I served as a member of the Coast Guard Reserve and really enjoyed it.

WLJ: What activity could you spend hours doing outside of the office?
Shorter: Fly fishing. It’s a great activity that provides you with some solitude so there is time to think, but at the same time it’s also a challenge.

WLJ: What was your favorite toy as a child?
Shorter: Legos.

WLJ: What was the first concert you attended?
Shorter: Metallica.

WLJ: What app can’t you live without?
Shorter: iAnnotate. Using my iPad I can take documents and mark them up with a stylus just as you would a paper document with a pen. Then when I’m done I can save it as a PDF and return it. It really comes in handy when working on documents.

WLJ: Do you have a phrase or word that you tend to overuse?
Shorter: Perfect. I hear it all the time from the associates that I use that term a lot. Everything is perfect.

WLJ: If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Shorter: Be an officer in the Coast Guard or be better at fly fishing.

WLJ: Who is someone that you admire?
Shorter: My grandfather. My dad’s dad. He was extremely hard-working and everything was about placing the other individual first and being honest in business. He was also a great family guy.

WLJ: What is your favorite sport to play or watch?
Shorter: I love to play golf. It’s a great sport and it’s fun to get out with my family and do it. As for a sport I love to watch, that would be basketball.

WLJ: What was the last book that you read?
Shorter: ‘David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants‘ by Malcolm Gladwell.