Apoyo Medico Legal

Dealing with legal issues improves a patient`s overall medical care. (Quote: Marple, Kate. Conceive of the administration of justice as a health care system. Washington, DC: National Center for the Medico-Legal Association, January 2015.) Addressing patients` unmet legal needs leads to better adherence to treatment plans, fewer unnecessary emergency room visits, fewer cases of uncompensated care, and better overall health of patients and the population. Even if you are eligible for coverage, there may be legal consequences. You may find it helpful to speak to a legal expert before making decisions about enrolling in a health insurance program. To search for non-profit organizations that provide free or low-cost legal services to immigrants, visit the National Directory of Immigration Legal Services. (The main page of the directory is in English, but you can change the language of the search tool by selecting « Spanish » from the drop-down menu where « Choose Language » is written.) Like other specialists, lawyers also advise healthcare providers. His specialty is diagnosing the legal barriers that prevent patients from achieving and maintaining good health. According to the Legal Services Corporation`s 2017 Justice Gap Report, 3 in 4 low-income households faced at least 1 unresolved civil law issue last year. more than half faced at least 2. Social determinants (external issues such as our personal lives or the environment in which we live) play an important role in our overall health and are significantly influenced by the legal issues people struggle with.

For example, protecting a person from unlawful discrimination in the workplace helps to maintain their workplace and access to health insurance through their employer. Solving a patient`s legal problems usually leads to a much healthier outcome, as helping a person keep their monthly food stamps could prevent a patient from having to choose between food and medication. For more information on forensic partnerships, visit the Website of the National Centre for Forensic Associations. Civil legal aid lawyers work in clinics, hospitals or medical centers for veterans. They train doctors and health specialists who work in these places to talk to their patients and determine if any legal issues might affect their health. Often, these social determinants are influenced by our unmet civilian needs and create barriers to healthy eating, adequate housing, employment and security. Medical partnerships don`t just affect individual patients and healthcare professionals. MLPs strive to transform clinical practice and population health by recognizing the need for broader policy change and actively working to achieve this. They also offer patients multiple levels of legal services, ranging from simple advice to full representation in legal proceedings. These are just a few examples from Kate Marple`s « Framing Legal Care as Health Care » chart published by the National Center for The Medico-Legal Association.

For more examples applicable to the real world, click here to see the full chart. In a medico-legal association (MLP), lawyers help medical professionals address the causes of a patient`s poor health that cannot be cured with medication alone, causes that can be attributed to legal problems. Health problems can arise from social and legal problems. Are you a lawyer, healthcare provider or administrator interested in starting your own MLP? To see the situation from the perspective of MLP`s lawyers and community social workers who work together daily and coordinate their efforts to help their patients as fully as possible, click here to watch this video from the Whittier Clinic.