Tampa-based WellCare Health Plans, Inc. Corporate Counsel Joins Carlton Fields

Tampa, Fla. – Carlton Fields is pleased to welcome health care attorney Marguerita Brunson Sims to its Tampa office. She brings more than 20 years of in-house, government, and private practice experience, most recently serving as senior corporate counsel for WellCare Health Plans, Inc., a Fortune500 managed care company headquartered in Tampa, FL.

In that role, Brunson Sims provided legal advice regarding complex health care arrangements between managed care health plans (various Medicare and Medicaid plans) and various providers and other organizations, reviewed federal and state regulatory provisions, and helped the company navigate the national legal and regulatory landscape. Previously, she was general counsel, corporate secretary, and chief compliance officer for FirstCare Health Plans, a Texas-based health insurance (managed care) company.

“We are thrilled to have Marguerita join us,” said James J. Kennedy, III, chair of Carlton Fields’ nationally recognized Health Care practice according to Best Lawyers Best Law Firms 2017. “She is a skilled lawyer, with firsthand knowledge of the way leading managed care companies operate and navigate legal issues.”

Brunson Sims will represent health care industry clients, including managed care companies and payers. Her experience includes handling a range of transactional, regulatory, litigation, compliance, and fraud and abuse issues.

Her experience also includes having worked as compliance counsel for Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp), a large, national Fortune 500 clinical laboratory company, where she helped monitor both federal and state compliance activity nationwide and drafted the company’s initial HIPAA policy manual. She also worked for international law firms in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and Texas, where she represented pharmaceutical companies, hospital systems, medical device manufacturers, and various other health care entities.

After graduating from law school, Brunson Sims worked in Washington, D.C., with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as a fraud and abuse attorney, and returned to the Washington, D.C., area to work at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a regulatory counsel within the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).

Brunson Sims said, “Carlton Fields is known for excellence, and it’s health care practice is superb. I’m excited to work with an incredibly talented group of lawyers.”

Brunson Sims received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and her A.B. in English from Georgetown University. She became a certified mediator after training at the Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution at the University of Texas School of Law.

She is a member of the American Bar Association and admitted in admitted in Connecticut and District of Columbia. (Until admission in Florida, any work on Florida matters supervised in accord with Rule 4-5.3) She is also a member of The American Health Lawyers Association and the Association of Corporate Counsel.