Company: AMWL
Filing Date: 2025-02-12
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-019024
Chunk: 124

Company: American Well Corp
Filing Date: 2025-02-12
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 124
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 on our relationships with affiliated professional entities, which we do not own, to provide physician services, and our business would be adversely affected if those relationships were disrupted. 

There is a risk that authorities in some jurisdictions may find that our contractual relationships with AMG and AMG’s physicians providing digital care violate laws prohibiting the corporate practice of medicine or fee-splitting. These laws generally prohibit the practice of medicine by or sharing of professional fees with lay persons or entities and are intended to prevent unlicensed persons or entities from interfering with or inappropriately influencing the physician’s professional judgment. Generally, we are prohibited from exercising control over the medical judgments or decisions of physicians or engaging in certain financial arrangements, such as splitting professional fees with physicians. The extent to which each state considers particular actions or contractual relationships to constitute improper influence of professional judgment varies across the states and is subject to change and to evolving interpretations by state boards of medicine and state attorneys general, among others. As such, we must monitor our compliance with laws in every jurisdiction in which we operate on an ongoing basis and we cannot guarantee that subsequent interpretation of the corporate practice of medicine laws will not circumscribe our business operations. The enforcement of state corporate practice of medicine doctrines may result in the imposition of penalties on physicians themselves for aiding the corporate practice of medicine, which could discourage physicians from participating in our network of providers. 

The corporate practice of medicine prohibition exists in some form, by statute, regulation, board of medicine or attorney general guidance, or case law, in more than 40 states, all of which we operate in, though the broad variation between state application and enforcement of the doctrine makes an exact count difficult. Due to the prevalence of the corporate practice of medicine doctrine, including in the states where we predominantly conduct our business, we provide administrative and management services to entities associated with AMG pursuant to which those entities reserve exclusive control and responsibility for all aspects of the practice of medicine and the delivery of medical services. We do not own our AMG-affiliated entities. For example, AMG affiliated entities are owned by Dr. Cynthia Horner, our Chief Medical Officer. We in turn contract with these entities through business support agreements and direct transfer agreements for the provision of health care services and the receipt of fees. For further discussion of this structure, see “Item 1. Business—Physicians and Healthcare Professionals.” While we expect that these relationships will continue, we cannot guarantee that they will. A material change in our relationship with AMG, whether resulting from a dispute among the entities, a