Cathy Deubel Salenko’s practice is devoted to representing private and public health care providers and payers in a wide variety of health care and business matters. She leads Best Best & Krieger LLP’s Health Care practice group.
 
She provides legal services to government payers, nonprofit health care systems, health care districts, hospitals, medical groups, physicians and other public, nonprofit and for-profit entities. Cathy’s practice includes:

• General health care and business counseling
• Contract negotiation and preparation
• Managed care
• Health regulatory and compliance issues
• Acquisitions, mergers and affiliations of health care businesses
• Health care financing transactions
• Troubleshooting and problem solving 

Cathy has served as a trusted adviser to senior management of health care clients throughout her more than three decades of health care practice. She understands the business of health care from various perspectives and is both a problem solver and strategic planner. She often assists in hot button issues, disputes and crisis management. Cathy has spent much of her career in negotiation of transactions, affiliations and disputes.
 
Cathy serves as the lead health care attorney for a public agency managed care plan and is heavily involved in strategic advising, drafting and negotiating provider and vendor contract and compliance issues. Cathy has also worked extensively on pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) contracts and compliance matters.
 
Cathy serves as general counsel to the County Medical Services Program Governing Board. Representing the Governing Board since before its inception in 1995, Cathy oversees all its legal matters and the indigent health care programs it administers for 35 California counties. Past legal work on behalf of the Governing Board includes: contracting with a pharmacy benefits manager for prescription drug benefit administration; contracting with third party administrators for health, dental and vision benefits administration; contracting with the State of California for a low-income health program, which operated under a federal Medicaid Waiver; and pilot projects to test various health care delivery models, such as a primary care benefit for indigent and undocumented populations.
 
Cathy has successfully completed numerous mergers, acquisition and affiliations of health care facilities, physician practices and businesses for nonprofit and district health care clients. In addition to the representation of a major nonprofit health care delivery system in over 20 years of growth through affiliation and acquisition, she has worked on both the system and the medical group side of the formation of medical foundations. For more than 20 years, Cathy served as lead borrower’s counsel to a major nonprofit health care system and other health care providers and entities in financing transactions exceeding $4 billion.
 
Prior to joining the firm in 2010, she was a shareholder with McDonough Holland & Allen in Sacramento for nearly 20 years.
 
Cathy is a graduate of the American Health Lawyers Association Mediator Training Program and offers mediation services concerning health care issues. She is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California and the District of Hawaii. She is licensed to practice law in the states of California and Hawaii.

Education

• University of San Diego School of Law, J.D.
• University of San Diego, Lawyer’s Assistant Program - Litigation Specialization, with honors
• California State University, Sacramento, B.A., with honors