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Medical legal team help patients thru Legal Aid’s HEAL program
TRACEY BLAIR
Legal News Reporter
Published: December 15, 2017
When it comes to our health, it’s been said that 20 percent is what goes on in a doctor’s office and the other 80 percent happens outside the doctor’s office.
Collaborative programs between the legal and medical community are designed to help patients with the other 80 percent.
Community Legal Aid’s Health Education Advocacy and Law partnership with area health providers is helping patients overcome legal problems that are getting in the way of their mental and physical health.
In 1993, Medical-Legal Partnership/Boston was launched at Boston Medical Center to address the social determinants of low-income patients’ health. Today, there are more than 80 medical-legal partnerships nationwide, according to mlpboston.org.
In 2009, Dr. Cooper White, a physician at Akron Children’s Hospital, teamed up with Legal Aid to start a HEAL program in Summit County.
“We’ve been building on it ever since,” said Marie Curry, managing attorney for the HEAL program.
Doctors and nurses refer patients to the program. Legal Aid attorneys can then open a case and address legal issues that can impact a patient’s health – including housing, education, employment, domestic violence, income stability and access to healthcare.
Curry said asthma is a common example of how a medical-legal partnership can be helpful.
A doctor may refer a patient to HEAL after noticing a child has had repeat visits to the emergency room with asthma attacks and asking the parents about the condition of the home the child is living in.
“We see a lot of housing condition cases – mold, cockroaches,” said Curry. “Mold exacerbates asthma. Going to the hospital three times a year is hard on a family and hard on kids. Medical-legal partnerships help families with how to manage asthma. An attorney can be helpful in working with the landlord to make sure that the mold is removed so the child can go home to a clean and safe environment.”
Education is another way HEAL frequently helps patients, including working with schools to make sure children with disabilities can access services they need to become successful adults.
“When kids are not keeping up in school, the school must give them services if they have disabilities,” Curry said. “But it’s hard for schools to identify disabilities that are not obvious. Some kids have developmental delays, an inability to focus or oppositional behavior. We can intervene to help them access the curriculum and set the student on the right path with small group interventions and a behavior plan. The special education process is complicated to figure out, and that’s how an advocate can help.
“Sometimes, a child comes to school acting out trauma due to adverse childhood experiences. They have a higher risk of suicide, multiple sex partners, substance abuse, obesity and cardiovascular disease. If you’re living in an environment with a toxic level of stress because your mom is working three jobs and she can’t help you with your homework, that toxic level of stress can impact our health. The goal is to help the child get the tools to get a job with a living wage, healthy food and decent housing. These are things that impact our health outside the doctor’s office.”
The HEAL program can also help adults get Medicaid approval for things like CT scans and Supplemental Security Income benefits – even when a patient has previously been denied for such benefits.
“We’ve found the addition of attorneys to our care team a really positive experience for both us and our patients,” Dr. White said. “We already have interdisciplinary teams working with each patient – doctors, nurses and social workers. The attorneys have been a great addition to the team, especially in the context of our efforts to see that every child has a medical home and our efforts to improve population health.”
Community Legal Aid is a non-profit law firm serving the needs of low-income people in central and northeast Ohio. Legal Aid Executive Director Steven McGarrity said HEAL is just one example of how the firm works to advocate for the community as a whole outside of direct client representation.
“We’re serving as collaborative partners and as a resource to the hospital, we’re educating landlords about safe housing practices or schools about proper services for disabled students,” said McGarrity.
Besides Akron Children’s, HEAL now also partners with Summa Health System.
“We are teaching our new doctors how to help their families in a different way,” Curry said. “It’s a more preventative model of law. We want to help the whole community get healthier. Lawyers and doctors working together is a great thing. It used to be like, `A lawyer is here with my patient. Now they’re going to sue me.’ Now, the thinking is, `A lawyer is part of my care team to help my patient.’ “
For more information, visit communitylegalaid.org/HEAL.