Manatt offices in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

In its latest move to bolster its health care consulting business, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips has brought on the former CEO of University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Ralph Muller, who led the Philadelphia-based health system for 16 years, will join the Manatt Health group Jan. 2. His tenure as CEO of Penn Health ended in June, a year after he announced his plans to step down.

In an interview Monday, Muller said he knew he wanted to stay engaged in the health care space after leaving Penn. He will continue to live in Philadelphia but will be considered part of Manatt's New York office, he said.

Muller also previously led the University of Chicago Hospitals.

According to William Bernstein, a Manatt partner and executive committee member who serves as chair of Manatt Health, the group has about 160 professionals, split roughly evenly between lawyers and consultants.

Asked why Muller is a valuable addition to the group, Bernstein praised the former CEO as "a force of nature."

"We do a lot of consulting around the country with academic medical centers. They're all navigating transformation of their businesses in one way or another," Bernstein said. "Ralph will fit in perfectly with existing engagements and new engagements."

Muller said he was familiar with Tom Enders, a senior managing director at Manatt Health who works with academic health centers, through his work at Penn and other organizations. So when he announced his planned departure from Penn and received offers from several different organizations in the health care sector, he chose Manatt because he had seen what the firm was doing in the industry for the last 10 years or so.

The other organizations were not law firms, he said. While he is not a lawyer, he noted, it makes sense for the type of work he does to be linked to a law firm, given the extensive regulatory considerations involved in health care governance, management and strategy.

"Almost everything has legal and policy as well as delivery aspects. These things are totally intertwined," Muller said. And Manatt, he said, has clients with whom he worked in his roles at Penn and Chicago.

Bernstein said Manatt Health has been focused on bringing on both lawyers and consultants, pointing to several hires in the last two years. Most recent was Yarmela Pavlovic, who joined Manatt from Hogan Lovells in November. In 2018, the firm also added health care venture capital investor Lisa Suennen, a pair of health care transactional lawyers from Drinker Biddle & Reath in Chicago and a health care consultant from Navigant.

"What's made it work is we have a firm where we can attract consultants because they're convinced they'll be an integral part of the firm," Bernstein said. "We've worked out the kinks in the model to have both lawyers and consultants working in the firm."

At Manatt, that started in the health care area, but the firm is expanding the strategy into its privacy and security and governmental practice, as well as exploring opportunities to do so in financial services, Bernstein said.

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