Medical-legal partnerships
- Issue Areas
- Health and well-being
Local governments can invest in this strategy using State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
- This strategy can help residents access health services and navigate public benefits programs. The U.S. Department of Treasury has indicated that strategies that help achieve these outcomes are eligible for the use of Fiscal Recovery Funds.
- Investments in this strategy are SLFRF-eligible as long as they are made in qualified census tracts or are designed to assist populations or communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.
Program overview
Addressing social and environmental factors: Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) integrate lawyers into healthcare settings to assist healthcare professionals in addressing social and environmental factors affecting patients’ health. MLPs are associated with reduced stress and improved health outcomes, well-being, and access to legal services.
Identifying patients in need of legal services: MLPs may be operated independently by healthcare systems, or through partnerships with legal aid societies, private practice law firms, law schools, or other legal services providers. As part of an MLP, patients can access on-site legal assistance through a referral from their healthcare provider. In some healthcare settings, standardized screening tools are used by providers to identify patients who may benefit from legal assistance.
Providing legal assistance: MLPs may assist patients with a range of social and environmental issues that can impact their health, such as those related to income, housing and utilities, education and employment, legal status, and personal and family stability. While MLPs typically serve all eligible patients referred to them, some may specialize in addressing the needs of certain subpopulations, like transgender or low income individuals.
Working collaboratively: As part of the MLP model, lawyers become part of the healthcare team, and may consult with providers, social workers, community health workers, and others to identify solutions that will advance individual and population health. In some cases, lawyers may also provide staff training, work on clinic-level process improvements, or promote broader policy changes.
- Strategies
-
Navigating health care systems and services
- Cost per Participant
-
Not available
Multiple studies with both rigorous and less-rigorous designs provide some evidence for medical-legal partnerships as a strategy to reduce stress and improve health outcomes, well-being, and access to legal services.
- This assessment is based on evidence from a 2018 systematic review.
Conduct a needs assessment: Healthcare systems should conduct a needs assessment to determine the social and environmental factors affecting their patients’ health and which factors are already addressed by existing services. Since resources are often limited, a needs assessment can help a healthcare system identify specific needs (e.g., access to public benefits) or patient populations (e.g., individuals experiencing homelessness) on which an MLP program can focus.
Determine the approach to staffing: A healthcare system should use the findings from its needs assessment to determine the mix of services its MLP team will offer (e.g., legal assessments, staff training and consults, or clinical process improvement projects). Based on this service mix, a healthcare system can estimate its staffing needs. The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnerships offers a toolkit that includes potential staffing models reflective of different service priorities.
Create a screening process: Healthcare systems should create a process to identify patients with unmet needs that may be addressed through legal services. This may be done by having patients complete a legal screening tool in the waiting room or by having staff ask patients questions either during check-in or during their visit with their provider. To reduce the burden on staff, most healthcare systems integrate legal screening questions into their existing social and environmental needs screening tools.
Promote continuous improvement: By collecting data on key outcomes related to their MLP, healthcare systems can demonstrate the program’s impact and identify opportunities for improvement. Typically, healthcare systems leverage their electronic healthcare record to collect data on the number of patients screened, the number of referrals made to the MLP team, the types of legal issues referred, demographics of the patients, among others.