Carolyn L. Coward

Carolyn Lloyd Coward is a principal with The Van Winkle Law Firm, where she focuses her practice on health care and labor and employment law. Combining her depth of health care industry knowledge with keen legal insight, she helps to ensure physicians, hospitals, long-term care facilities and other health-care entities comply with federal and state regulations, including HIPAA, fraud and abuse statutes and the Stark Law regarding physician self-referrals. In addition, she counsels health care providers and medical centers to structure business ventures and negotiate and develop employment and shareholder agreements in compliance with government and Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement regulations.

Throughout her career, Coward has represented health care providers in licensing and peer-review matters, reimbursement appeals and business disputes. She is a frequent speaker before legal and health care industry organizations as well as private businesses in North Carolina.

Her professional highlights have included unwinding three major medical practices and successfully negotiating terms without litigation, alternative dispute resolution nor interruption of practice business; representing a physician practice in a reimbursement issue with Medicare, in which the practice was allowed to retain $100,000 in contested fees; and successfully defending a local hospital in U.S. District Court in a multi-million dollar claim commenced by a surgeon seeking reinstatement of medical privileges.

Practice Areas

• Administrative & Regulatory Law
• Business Operations
• Employment & Workplace Law
• Health Care
• Labor Law
• Business

Awards & Honors

• Lawyer of the Year, Asheville Area – The Best Lawyers in America® 2020 – Health Care Law
• The Best Lawyers in America® – Lawyer of the Year (Asheville);
  • Health Care Law  – 2020, 2023, 2025
• Business North Carolina Legal Elite
• The Best Lawyers In America 2025

Practice Highlights

• Unwound three major medical practices and successfully negotiated terms without litigation or alternative dispute resolution and no interruption of practice business.
• Represented a physician practice in a reimbursement issue with Medicare in which the practice was allowed to retain $100,000 in contested fees.
• Regularly represents providers in Medicare appeals and recently successfully argued an appeal before the ALJ that allowed the provider to recoup over $100,000.
• Successfully structured business ventures between hospitals and physicians in compliance with fraud and abuse, physician self-referral and tax-exempt laws.
• Successfully defended a local hospital in U.S. District Court in a multi-million dollar claim commenced by a surgeon as a result of his medical privileges being summarily suspended at the recommendation of the hospital’s medical staff. The action asserted claims for deprivation of due process, freedom of speech, breach of contract, slander and contract interference.