David P. Winkle is a partner in the Atlanta office of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP whose practice focuses on healthcare and life sciences litigation, government relations, and state and local governments.

Mr. Winkle represents nonprofit hospitals, hospital authorities, physician practices, LTACHs, and ambulatory surgery centers. He advises clients on a broad range of state and federal regulatory issues, certificates of need, medical staff credentialing and peer review, licensure and accreditation, compliance investigations, administrative hearings, confidentiality and privilege issues, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, service contracts, and business ventures. He also advises them on their continuing relationship with local, state, and federal governments and their agencies.

His recent work experience includes:

• Purchase acute care hospital by a neighboring acute care hospital and merger under one permit.
• Affiliation of critical access hospital with acute care hospital, joint operation agreement, development by acute care hospital of replacement CAH.
• Purchase by acute care hospital of physician diagnostic imaging center and conversion to provider based.
• Purchase by acute care hospital of two ambulatory surgery centers and consolidation with hospital’s new ASC.
• Purchase of several home health care agencies, development of joint ventures and management arrangements.
• Purchase of skilled nursing facility by church affiliated group.
• Representation of sellers in post-closing dispute over sale of several skilled nursing facilities.
• Hospital board of directors training in Tennessee, Alabama, Texas and Georgia.
• Participate on behalf of seller in the sale of system of long-term acute care hospitals.
• Sale of large cardiology practice to integrated health system.
• Defense of qui tam action alleging claims for services not medically indicated.
• Sale of a fifty bed specialty hospital and carve out of a campus of healthcare system. Sale from 501(c)(3) to for-profit requiring partial defeasance of exempt bonds.
• Sale of five certificates of need for home healthcare and related assets of home healthcare provider. Asset purchase agreement, transfer of certificates of need, licensure, assignment of leases and contracts.
• Development, financing, and organization of joint-venture (hospital/physicians) ambulatory surgery center.
• Development by hospital authority of medical office building upon real estate purchased and improved with tax exempt financing. Medical office building partially utilized by hospital, partially sold to physicians as condominiums.
• Development of a 100-acre mixed-use out-patient medical campus.
• Development of system of five sleep labs within metro area.
• Development of hospital-within-hospital, long-term acute care 35-bed specialty hospital within general acute care/surgical hospital.
• Development of co-management and global billing arrangements between hospital and physician-specialist.

A sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Winkle has been a contributing author for the Georgia Hospital Law Manual since 1984. Other recent audiences include the Georgia Hospital Association and its chief information officers, the Georgia State Bar, the Hospital Financial Management Association, the Alabama Association of Hospital Risk Managers, medical group manager organizations, and various healthcare providers.  Mr. Winkle has recently conducted board of director training for hospitals in Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and Georgia.  Mr. Winkle has written articles published by the American Health Lawyers Association, the Georgia Hospital Association and the Georgia Academy of Healthcare Lawyers.

From 1975-1976, Mr. Winkle served as a law clerk to The Honorable Robert H. Jordan of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

A member of the State Bar of Georgia, he is admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals, U.S. District Court, the Georgia Court of Appeals, and the Georgia Supreme Court. He is a member of the American Bar Association (Health Law Section), the American Health Lawyers Association, the State Bar of Georgia (Special Master, Disciplinary Matters; Local Government Section; Health Law Section), the Georgia Association of County Commissioners, the Georgia Municipal Association, and the Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce. He is a past president of the Clayton County Bar Association and the Georgia Academy of Healthcare Attorneys (Hospital and Health Systems; Physician Practices). He also serves on the board of advisors for the Atlanta Salvation Army.

A Georgia State Bar hearing officer, Mr. Winkle also is certified by the American Health Lawyers Association as a mediator.

Mr. Winkle has been recognized as one of the “Leaders in Their Field” by Chambers USA in 2009, 2010, and 2011; as a “Super Lawyer” in healthcare by Law & Politics and Atlanta Magazine for each of the past eight years; and as one of the “Outstanding Healthcare Transaction lawyers” of 2009 by the editors of Nightingale’s Healthcare News.  

In 1975, Mr. Winkle earned his Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from the Mercer University Walter F. George School of Law. While in law school, he served as managing editor for the Mercer University Law Review. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1971.