Medical Center Offers Legal Program for Families
To "figh[t] the legal and administrative battles that the doctors deem necessary to improve childrens' health in ways that pills and surgery cannot," the Boston Medical Center has implemented the Family Advocacy Program, a hospital-based staff of three lawyers, the New York Times reports. The program "goes far beyond the social work" commonly provided by hospitals with lawyers performing such tasks as "pressuring recalcitrant landlords, helping families apply for food stamps and persuading insurance companies to pay for baby formula." The lawyers, "with more than 300 referrals a year," often do not have much time to go to court; instead they "help poor families navigate the administrative byways" and help doctors "get their small patients what they need." According to staff attorney Ellen Lawton, the lawyers help physicians "put things in legalese, [which] they don't teach ... in medical school." In return, doctors help the lawyers by throwing "medical heft ... behind a legal or administrative request."
The program has been operating since 1993, but to expand services and better serve low-income families the legal staff recently introduced "walk-in Mondays" in the pediatrics clinic for parents to receive unscheduled legal advice. The Times reports that the partnership has helped doctors to better communicate with families and made them more willing to ask questions such as, "Do you have enough food?" because now they have "lawyers who can help if the answer is no." Previously, Lawton said, "they didn't want to screen for something they could do nothing about." The Family Advocacy Program works as "preventive medicine," according to its director, Jean Zotter. It "can catch problems early" because parents are "more likely to confide troubles to doctors than to agency bureaucrats, and to trust the information they receive in a clinic." Zotter said, "Traditional medicine can treat the effects of poverty, but this is a program that hopes to intervene so that poverty won't have the effects it has on children's health" (Goldberg, New York Times, 5/16).
This is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.