Medical Legal Partnership of Oregon
Some of the country`s largest health systems have introduced legal services as part of their response to patients` unhealthy social needs. Medical-legal partnerships are used to improve care and reduce costs for a wide range of populations, including patients with high needs and costs. MLP lawyers work side-by-side with doctors, nurses, social workers and other support staff to provide comprehensive services to improve patient health. When a patient is faced with complex social issues, such as eviction or intimate partner violence, lawyers can provide important legal services to prevent adverse health consequences. Medico-legal partnerships are also based on community clinics, addiction treatment centers, behavioral clinics, and a variety of other locations where community health needs are met. “The legal system is often thought of as a very strong entity,” Garcia says, “but this partnership has given us the opportunity to rethink our approach to work and how we approach problems as they arise.” According to an annual survey by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), five of the top ten reported needs of homeless veterans require legal assistance. The VA encourages its medical centres to provide free local space for legal partners in the community. Many have gone even further and fully integrated medical-legal partnerships into health care. Legal Aid Services of Oregon and Kaiser Permanente recently entered into such a partnership. In today`s video, you meet two advocates who are doing the job.
Shannon Garcia, a lawyer hired with Oregon Legal Aid Services, and Althea Ender, a community clinic integrator at Kaiser Permanente, work hard every day to ensure Oregon residents have access to justice when faced with complex legal health needs. Laura Russell – Co-Founder, Director of Operations and PolicyLaura Russell is Director of Operations and Policy at MLPO and an attorney at Oregon Health Justice Center, where she works at Richmond Clinic MLP and Doernbecher NICU MLP. She became passionate about health justice while working in college for a Medicaid-managed care company. This passion led her to graduate school to better understand the intersection of health and poverty. Russell believes that medical-legal partnerships play a crucial role in addressing the impact of poverty on the health of patients and the population. Prior to law school, she was a Health Policy Fellow at the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation (CHRT) at the University of Michigan. While studying law at Lewis & Clark, she practiced law at the Chicago Medical Legal Partnership for Children and Northwest Health Law Advocates in Seattle, WA. The Oregon Board of Directors Medical-Legal Partnership is a model of patient care that integrates lawyers into health care to provide holistic and integrated care to low-income patients most affected by health inequities.
Ken Gatter- Co-founder, Executive DirectorKen Gatter, MD, JD, is Executive Director of the Medical-Legal Partnership and Professor and Vice President of Anatomical Pathology at OHSU. He first observed the social determinants of health while working as a paralegal at the Bronx DA office before attending Boston University Law School. He practiced law for several years and then went to medical school at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), where he completed his residency at Case Western University Hospitals. Since moving to Portland in 1998, he has worked to combine law and medicine by teaching health law as an adjunct professor at Willamette Law School, publishing on various topics related to health law, and introducing medical students to the legal issues of medicine. Some healthcare organizations directly employ lawyers to address patients` unhealthy social needs (the “Build it as a direct service” model). The vast majority work with a local legal advisory body or academic legal clinic in their community (the “contract it” model). Many of these legal organizations partner with multiple healthcare organizations to provide MLP services. The legal department and staff of these programs are currently coping: treating the disease by managing the symptoms is health care that comes too late. Social and environmental factors – such as the availability of health insurance, working conditions, housing conditions, income levels, and personal and family stability – often determine the underlying health of a community long before a doctor`s visit raises a particular issue.
In response, medical providers have partnered with legal aid providers to develop a broader view of health care. Hundreds of leading health organizations across the country integrate patient-centred legal services into their health care to meet the health-related social needs of their communities. Health centres are the fastest growing sector for the management of medico-legal partnerships across the health system. Since 2014, the Federal Health Resources and Services Administration (RHAH) has designated legal services as an “enabling service,” paving the way for health centres to use federal funds to fund legal aid to patients locally. The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership is a National Training and Technical Assistance Partner (NTTAP) funded by HRSA. These medical-legal partnerships address the root causes of medical problems affecting low-income communities by seeking solutions to broader systemic problems through legal and policy change. Medico-legal partnerships bring health care advocates to help individual patients, while helping medical providers navigate the legal system and transform policy and practice. The Campaign for Equal Justice invites our entire legal community, including you, to join us in restoring justice in Oregon. If you`ve already made a donation, thank you! Your support makes a difference. Your donation helps this medical-legal partnership continue to address legal issues that impact the health of low-income communities.
Their support helps lawyers like Shannon and Althea find solutions to broader systemic issues through legal and policy change. Many of the earliest medical-legal partnerships were based in pediatric settings, and the American Academy of Pediatrics was an early proponent of this intervention, passing a resolution in 2007 encouraging health professionals to work more closely with advocates to improve children`s health. Today, nearly one in six children`s hospitals in the United States has a medical-legal partnership. MLPs aim to transform health care by training clinicians to identify and work with lawyers and social workers to address social and legal issues that impair health, with the goal of providing holistic, person-centred, trauma-informed care. When you donate today, you are helping legal aid lawyers and health care providers meet the needs of low-income Oregans with holistic legal and medical care. Click one of the above statuses to show or hide the MLP status further. MEDICO-LEGAL PARTNERSHIPS Combining the power of law and medicine Alyssa Walker-Keller – Multnomah ESD Migrant Education For more information about MLP activities and where they take place, or to tell us about MLP activities in your organization Contact us Scott Fields – OCHIN, Oregon Health Sciences University For more information, visit the Medical-Legal Partnership of Oregon or the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership. Laura Russell – Oregon Forensic Partnership / Oregon Health Justice Center.
Rachel Arnold – Co-Founder, MLPO, Health Share of Oregon.
