Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year-old oak tree that towers over it.
– Hope Jahren
Providing Practical Compliance From Deeply Rooted Expertise and Experience To Make A Difference for Our Clients

Our Focus
Whitelaw Compliance Group focuses on emerging health care companies and organizations. We believe that from humble acorns mighty oaks will grow. We also know that every client deserves high-quality, practical compliance that fits the organization’s needs and grows as the company grows. We do this by listening and focusing on one client at a time.

Our Expertise and Experience
With almost 30 years working in and with healthcare companies, and having designed, built and run 4 different compliance programs, we know from experience what works. We also know how to fit the pieces together to get things done as quickly and efficiently giving us the ability to create innovative, effective compliance, because “out-of-the box” compliance solutions simply won’t do.
Compliance Blog
Moving the Needle – It’s Time to Rethink the Ethics & Compliance Dialog
Thirty years have passed since ethics and compliance were added to the working vocabulary of life sciences. I know because I was there at the beginning. However, while the business of healthcare...
The Opioid Crisis & the Risk of Diversion
HCCA has just published an updated version of its Complete Healthcare Compliance Manual for 2022. The Complete Healthcare Compliance Manual is an all-in-one, comprehensive guide that provides new...
Mitchell Hamline & MSBA Host CLE Program Tackling the Theranos Case
This CLE program is a collaboration between Mitchell Hamline's Health Law Institute and the Health Law Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association. Dr. Whitelaw and Manny Tzavlakis, Managing...
We Offer a Wide Range of Services
With our flexible, efficient, and experienced approach, Whitelaw Compliance Group can provide a wide range of solutions, custom-tailored to meet each individual client’s needs and budget. Our services include:
- Compliance vision and risk strategy for the present and future
- Program health-checks and CIA readiness assessments
- Board of Director expert services, training, and support
- Interim department staffing
- Policy and SOP development
- Process development and execution
- Helpline creation and management
- Investigation process development and execution
- Staff training and knowledge enhancement
- Regulatory response and remediation
- Serving as an Expert Witness

Company News & Recent Articles
News
MITCHELL HAMLINE SCHOOL OF LAW
This summer for the third year, Dr. Whitelaw will be teaching a course on the opioid crisis:
Health Care Law & Opioids: How the “Man-Made Plague” Is Transforming the Pharmaceutical Industry
The current opioid crisis also has generated an enormous amount of federal, state, and local litigation, much of which is ongoing. However, it is clear, even though the litigation is far from over, that the aftermath of the opioid cases will transform the pharmaceutical industry in much the same way that the big tobacco cases did.
With the amount of information that is publicly available (e.g., media coverage, case evidence, pleadings, settlements and verdicts), the opioid crisis and its attendant litigation present students with a unique opportunity to explore the intersection between public health, regulations, compliance, and the law.


Books & Articles
HCCA Complete Healthcare Compliance Manual (2022): Author of new chapter entitled The Opioid Crisis and the Risk of Diversion.
Opioid Crisis: Whitelaw, S., When Money and Doritos Don’t Suffice – The Crucial Imperative for Integrating Effective Compliance Controls In The Ongoing Opioid Settlements, 5.10 Policy & Medicine Compliance Update, 1 (2019).
Drug Pricing: Whitelaw, Seth; Fiorentino, Nicodemo; and O’Leary, Jennifer (2018) “Drug Pricing—The Next Compliance Waterloo,” Mitchell Hamline Law Review: Vol. 44 : Iss. 4 , Article 2.
Policy & Medicine Articles
2021
Governance & Operations: Ignorance is not Bliss – Why Hope and a “Faith-Based Approach to Compliance are Untenable – Sep. 2021 (co-authored with Manny Tzavlakis
Transparency: Through the Looking Glass – A Patients Perspective on Open Payments Leads to New Transparency Bill – Aug. 2021
Opioid Crisis: Kryptonite for Consultants – Massachusetts Sues Purdue Pharma’s Marketing Consultant – Jun. 2021
2020
Opioid Crisis: Burning Down the House – Lessons from the Insys Therapeutics Saga – Jun. 2020 (co-authored with Robert N. Wilkey, Esq.)
Governance & Operations: Redressing Corporate Misdeeds — Is Holding Individuals Accountable the Answer? – Jan. 2020 (co-authored with Nicodemo Fiorentino, Esq.)
