Outstanding In-House Counsel (tie)
Audrey Andrews
Tenet Healthcare Corp.
New coaches who take on a troubled sports franchise often refer to it as a “rebuilding” period. One might say that Audrey Andrews took over Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp.’s ethics and compliance programs during such a rebuilding phase in 2006.
Tenet had just finalized the settlement of a high-profile Justice Department investigation into the healthcare company’s quality standards, alleged physician kickbacks, and Medicare pricing strategy. And Andrews, who had joined Tenet’s law department in 1998 as hospital operations counsel, had helped Tenet employees faced with subpoenas from the Louisiana attorney general’s office during its investigation into hospital deaths in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Identifying the challenges facing her as “trying to stay ahead of the curve, to learn the lessons of the problems of the past, and to be proactive,” Andrews brought a “new-sheriff-in-town” attitude to her role as senior vice president and chief compliance officer. Although Tenet’s compliance program had previously been a “response unit” within the company’s legal department, on Andrews’ watch, it has evolved into an independent department of its own reporting directly to a committee of Tenet’s board of directors. Andrews oversees 89 compliance professionals, and helped implement Tenet’s program of having full-time compliance officers in each of its 50 hospitals. It’s a best practice that Tenet was the first hospital system in the country to adopt, seven years before being called for by the federal government.
Andrews stresses that the emphasis on ethics and compliance is more than just a reaction to the increased fines and penalties that have accompanied greater regulatory oversight by government over healthcare, but is in fact an integral part of the healthcare reform debate as companies like Tenet focus on eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse. As a result, she says, her job involves “integrating all the different areas of risk within the organization, from SEC issues to Dodd-Frank, to working with the clinicians on quality assurance issues.”
On the national front, Andrews serves as vice chair of the Federation of American Hospitals’ law and operational policy and quality committees. Closer to home, she founded the Healthcare Chief Compliance Officer Council, composed of her counterparts at top north Texas hospitals, as a way of fostering idea-sharing among industry leaders.
Early in her career, Andrews took to heart the advice that “the best PR you can do for yourself is the project sitting on your desk, The way you respond determines the work you’ll get.” Judging by her results at Tenet, Andrews won’t be lacking for work anytime soon.
—John Browning
Finalists
Tonya Juanita Holt
LSG Sky Chefs Inc.
In her five years with Sky Chefs, the world’s largest airline caterer, Tonya Holt has led training and education initiatives to decrease the company’s total number of lawsuits by more than 80 percent. At the same time, she has used alternative fee arrangements to reduce litigation fees and expenses by more than 70 percent, and is currently working on methods to cut workers’ compensation costs while educating others on avoiding costly issues that arise in corporate law.
Janie Perelman
Michaels Stores Inc.
As a plaintiff’s attorney for labor, employment, and commercial litigation, Janie Perelman saw a lot of litigation that, she says, “could have been resolved or actually avoided.” Perelman made the decision to seek in-house work “to be on the front lines.” Since then she has worked to reduce litigation at companies ranging from Zales to Chuck E. Cheese’s. After reducing litigation and litigation costs by 50 percent at Zale Corp., Perelman is on a mission to do the same at Michaels, which she joined in 2010.
Elizabeth Ramirez-Washka
Dr Pepper Snapple Group
Elizabeth Ramirez-Washka became the head of employment and labor litigation for Dr Pepper Snapple Group just when the company split off from Cadbury Schweppes. The spinoff left her with the challenge, or the opportunity, of developing a new labor strategy for the company, in addition to handling contract negotiations and the day-to-day issues of DPS’ unionized facilities. With eight years of experience at the National Labor Relations Board, Ramirez-Washka has become DPS’ primary spokesperson and liaison with the union.
