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Karen Nikos
CMA Media Relations Manager
916-551-2069

SACRAMENTO – The California Medical Association has appointed Deborah Winegard, an attorney from Georgia with extensive experience in health care, as its new Vice President and General Counsel. This appointment was approved by the CMA Board of Trustees on Friday.

As General Counsel, Winegard will be in charge of legal affairs for the CMA, and will lead a legal team at the CMA Sacramento headquarters. She will begin her duties immediately and will relocate to Sacramento in the fall. She is taking a job held for 21 years by Catherine Hanson, who is now Vice President, Private Sector Advocacy and Advocacy Resource Center, at the American Medical Association in Chicago.

“We are very pleased to have someone of Deborah’s high caliber and experience in health care advocating for the California Medical Association on behalf of patients and physicians,” said Anmol S. Mahal, M.D., president of the CMA. “With her leadership, we will be able to continue the legal advocacy for which CMA is known, and we will undoubtedly achieve new heights.”

Winegard started representing physicians in 1985 as an Associate in the Atlanta office of the national law firm of King & Spalding and has remained engaged on health policy issues on behalf of physicians for more than 20 years. Even when her career was not focused on health care, she was involved in health policy nonprofit work with the National Kidney Foundation and the LifeLink Foundation.

She graduated with honors from George Washington University Law School and obtained her bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University. Winegard is the Vice Chair for the State Bar of Georgia Health Law Section Executive Committee, Director at Large for the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers, and Legal Counsel and member of the Board of Directors for the Alliance Française d’ Atlanta. She was General Counsel for the Medical Association of Georgia for three years, where she also served as the Director of Third-Party Payor Advocacy. She also previously worked for the law firm Phelps Dunbar and served as Law and Government Affairs Vice President for AT&T.

She currently serves as Compliance Dispute Facilitator for Aetna/CIGNA where she has helped resolve disputes resulting in millions of dollars in compensation previously denied to physicians in California and throughout the nation. These resolutions resulted in payment and policy changes beneficial to physicians. The California Medical Association, founded in 1856, is the professional organization of 35,000 physicians drawn from all specialties and modes of practice. It is the largest professional health care organization in the state and is recognized as a national leader in physician and medical issues.

The CMA has been a legal force nationwide, successfully representing physicians on a full range of issues – from billing and contract issues, to prescribing rights, to hospital staffing issues -- ranging from local jurisdictions to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In one of the best-known examples of CMA legal work, the CMA and its physicians were lead plaintiffs in a civil class action filed in 2000 against leading health insurers. The multi-state lawsuit, filed under RICO (Racketeering-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), was the first of its kind and resulted in settlements with most of the major for-profit health insurance companies throughout the country on accusations they denied and delayed care and used software that automatically down-coded, or reduced, physician charges. Winegard is currently enforcing the provisions of two of the settlements reached as a result of that litigation.

The CMA has for many years published the California Physician’s Legal Handbook, a popular, multi-volume legal bible for attorneys and physicians alike. The publication was started by CMA under Hanson’s leadership.