With a background in healthcare operations and executive leadership, Noreen provides strategic advice for healthcare clients.
Noreen’s focus is supporting healthcare providers and health plans as they ensure appropriate reimbursement. She frequently works with providers who are finding new ways to operate: many of the clients Noreen supports are in the process of forming new healthcare networks with the aim of filling gaps in existing care. She assists with compliance and governance structures, as well as with reimbursement strategies with third-party payors, and she also represents clients in resolving situations where reimbursement has previously been limited to private pay patients but who are now able to access reimbursement from a patient’s health plan benefit.
While Noreen regularly serves clients across the healthcare spectrum, she has a special focus on mental health, substance use disorder treatment (“Behavioral Health”), and psychedelics-assisted treatment providers. With FDA approval anticipated for various psychedelic therapeutics, Noreen helps these future providers structure their organizations and determine the most effective path to reimbursement.
Noreen also counsels healthcare organizations and benefit plans on the new benefit administration laws of recent years, including the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, the No Surprises Act, transparency in coverage and hospital pricing transparency regulations, Medicare Advantage compliance, and those governing risk-sharing and health insurance payment arrangements. These intensely detailed regulations establish significant data and reporting requirements and often alter organizations’ existing contracts, recordkeeping procedures and various other policies. Noreen knows clients want to comply, but the required changes are often so immense that they aren’t sure how to do so.
Prior to joining Husch Blackwell, Noreen served as Interim CEO, General Counsel and Chief Human Resources Executive for a national managed behavioral health joint venture. In this position, she leveraged her experience in strategic planning and corporate governance to guide the company to 500 percent growth over six years, manage a network of thousands of providers, and help secure the largest contract in company history.
Noreen’s background means that she intuitively understands the operational needs and concerns of healthcare leaders, and she’s well-versed in the strategic thinking these organizations require. She also has firsthand knowledge of how claims are processed and a deep understanding of the Affordable Care Act and the insurance industry. Noreen speaks clients’ language, and she has a particularly nuanced understanding of the behavioral health world. As a behavioral health managed care executive, she helped advocate for mental health parity and integrated care, and thus understands these requirements inside out. It’s second nature to her to help clients with their distinct compliance needs, as well as audits and reimbursement challenges.
Appreciated both for her decisiveness and humor, Noreen is a relationship builder who can share with clients her own leadership experiences in developing large multi-state organizations while reducing legal exposure. Her aim is to help clients solve their legal and organizational challenges and ensure they receive the appropriate type of payment for their services so that they can focus on healthcare.