Wachler & Associates

RAC audit defense is the line that tells you who this firm is really built for. When a Recovery Audit Contractor sends a hospital or a physician group an overpayment demand, somebody has to fight the recoupment through the appeals levels, and that work sits at the center of Wachler & Associates. The Royal Oak, Michigan practice has been handling healthcare law since 1985, and it keeps a maintained RAC resources section on the site to back up the claim that this is a long-running specialty, not a sideline picked up when audits got busy.

RAC audit defense as core practice

The firm describes a very high success rate defending those audits since the program began, which is the firm's own characterization, so a prospective client should ask for specifics during a consultation. The depth of the dedicated RAC material at least suggests the claim is anchored in sustained work.

Compliance and transactional services

The practice areas read as a coherent set, not a scattergun list. Audit defense and appeals cover the alphabet of payers and watchdogs: RAC, MAC, OIG, and Medicaid reviews, plus the overpayment demands that follow them. Sitting next to that are the compliance disciplines a provider has to get right before an auditor ever shows up, meaning Stark Law, the Anti-Kickback Statute, broader fraud and abuse work, and HIPAA. Then there is the transactional side, with healthcare corporate structuring and deals. The pieces fit together because a firm that defends audits learns exactly where providers tend to slip, and that knowledge feeds the compliance advice and the way transactions get structured to avoid trouble down the road. Wachler & Associates also handles general healthcare regulatory and compliance matters, the catch-all that comes with serving a heavily policed industry.

General counsel arrangements for providers

One service worth singling out is the general counsel arrangement. The firm acts as on-call counsel for hospitals, urgent care centers, physician groups, and similar providers, which suits an outfit that does not have the volume to keep a lawyer on staff but still hits regulatory questions often enough to want one on speed dial. That model also explains the national reach: the work is not tied to walk-in foot traffic, so providers across the country can use Wachler & Associates without being anywhere near Michigan. The articles and resources library rounds this out, giving providers a place to read up before they pick up the phone, and it doubles as evidence that the lawyers here write about their field regularly.

Leadership credentials in healthcare law

Managing partner Andrew B. Wachler carries credentials that are easy to verify and genuinely relevant to the work. He sits on the American Bar Association Health Law Section Editorial Board and has served as Vice Chair of the ABA Fraud and Abuse Section. For a firm whose core revolves around fraud and abuse statutes, having a name partner who helped steer the bar association's work in that exact area is the kind of alignment between the pitch and the substance that you do not always find when a firm advertises a specialty.

Team composition and specialization focus

The roster is small and named in full: Dustin T. Wachler, Jennifer L. Colagiovanni, Daniel D. Ayyash, Stephen Shaver, and Cheryl Sawicki round out the team alongside the managing partner. A boutique of this size lives or dies on depth in one field, and the staffing here matches the pitch. Nobody is claiming to do personal injury on Tuesdays and securities law on Thursdays. It is healthcare law, top to bottom, for the providers and institutions that have to navigate it. That focus is the whole proposition at Wachler & Associates, and the site does not muddy it.

Peer recognition from legal professionals

On outside standing, the Martindale AV Preeminent peer review rating is the strongest marker on offer, sitting at the top tier of a system where other lawyers grade their colleagues. In legal circles that kind of peer endorsement counts for more than anonymous consumer stars, precisely because it comes from people who know the work being assessed.

Beyond it, the public review record is limited: a Yelp listing with a single photo and no clear review count, a lone Glassdoor entry from an employee calling it an excellent boutique health law firm with good work-life balance, and a BCGSearch profile that ranks the firm without showing a visible number. For a specialty practice serving institutional clients, that picture is expected rather than alarming, since hospitals do not leave star ratings the way restaurant diners do. The peer rating does more for Wachler & Associates here than a stack of consumer reviews ever would.

Reaching Wachler & Associates is straightforward. A Contact Us page sits at the expected spot, the phone number runs across the site so it is visible wherever a visitor lands, and the Royal Oak street address is published openly rather than buried in fine print. For a client weighing whether to hand over an audit defense that could run into serious money, that openness about who the firm is and where it operates counts for something real, and it fits the picture of a practice that has nothing to hide about its identity.

What Wachler & Associates ends up offering is a narrow, deep practice that has stayed pointed at the same clientele for decades, led by a partner whose bar association roles map directly onto the firm's busiest work, with a peer rating the legal profession respects and contact details anyone can find in seconds.