The first of its kind in the area, CoxHealth and Legal Services of Southern Missouri have collaborated to create a medical-legal partnership.
Through a four-year grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health, the CoxHealth MLP brings health care and legal professionals together to provide free legal services to patients who meet income guidelines. Awarded in August 2014, CoxHealth spokeswoman Michelle Leroux said attorneys began working in the hospital in September and already have helped roughly 100 patients.
The move comes two months before NPR and ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, released a report on nonprofit hospitals seizing uninsured patient wages to cover medical bills.
According to ProPublica’s findings, in 2013, the nonprofit CoxHealth filed 857 suits and garnished $688,518 in patient wages.
The partnershipAccording to a CoxHealth release, the goal of the partnership is to break the cycle of frequent hospitalizations as a result of social issues that can harm patients’ health, such as domestic violence, poor housing conditions, eviction, homelessness and the loss of food or insurance benefits.
“When faced with these challenges, some patients put their health farther down their list of concerns,” said Dr. Mark Entrup, hospitalist and medical director of Case Management at Cox Medical Center South, in the release. “They get well and leave the hospital but return to the same environment, and the next thing you know they are back with us again.”
Caregivers are trained to screen patients for social factors of health that may have legal remedies. They listen for issues listed in the acronym, IHELP:
- Income maintenance and food insecurity;
- Housing such as evictions, utilities and foreclosures;
- Ensuring safety through orders of protection, divorce and custody for victims of domestic violence;
- Legal aid with simple estate planning and health care directives; and
- Powers of attorney and guardianship.
“This is the next piece of the puzzle in the transition of care,” said Bobby Davis, a case management supervisor, in the release. “This will help us close the gap in getting patients connected to the services they need.”
A Legal Services attorney is available to visit a patient’s bedside to address legal needs, and MLP staff follow the patient after discharge.
The suitsAccording to the NPR and ProPublica report, hospital-patient suits are not typically tracked by any organization, but many hospitals utilize the practice to collect from the uninsured. The report founds tens of thousands of suits, with at least 15,000 in the Show-Me State alone in 2013.
Missouri’s most prolific litigator is Mosaic Life Care in St. Joseph. The report found from 2009 through 2013, Northwest Financial Services – Mosaic’s debt collection agency – filed more than 11,000 lawsuits, garnished the pay of about 6,000 people and seized at least $12 million.[[In-content Ad]]
