Susan J. Freed

Susan J. Freed is a Shareholder at Dentons Davis Brown. Her practice focuses on Health Care Law, helping health care providers and health plans operate successfully in a challenging regulatory and reimbursement landscape.

With over 20 years of experience representing health care providers and plans, Susan has a deep understanding of the health care industry. Her clients include health systems, critical access hospitals, physician practices, long-term care facilities and retirement communities, management companies, rural health clinics and community health centers. She also works extensively with employer-sponsored health plans and their advisors, helping structure and advise self-funded health plans, including multiple employer welfare arrangements (MEWA) and association health plans.

Her experience includes negotiating complex management and operations transfer agreements for retirement communities, establishing MEWAs for rural health entities, developing retiree medical benefit strategies, and assisting critical access hospitals with purchasing physician practices and converting them to provider-based rural health clinics. She also helps clients investigate, self-report and correct compliance issues, respond to HIPAA breaches and develop Stark-compliant physician compensation methodologies.

Susan grew up on a family farm in Northwest Iowa and is passionate about ensuring rural Americans have access to high-quality health care. She holds a JD from DePaul University College of Law and a BS from the University of Iowa. She has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America since 2012 for Employee Benefits (ERISA) Law and Health Care Law, and was named its 2026 and 2022 Employee Benefits (ERISA) Law "Lawyer of the Year" in the Des Moines metro.