GNYHA will continue its Social Determinants of Health Learning Series on November 27 with an event on developing medical-legal partnerships. Medical-legal partnerships are a collaborative effort between legal professionals and health care providers to address legal aspects of social needs that could affect health outcomes. Services generally include helping patients with applications for public benefits, food insecurity, education, substandard housing conditions, and immigration benefits.
By providing and coordinating legal services to vulnerable patients, these partnerships may align a focus on social determinants of health activities in the clinical setting with community health, population health, and value-based payment initiatives, including New York’s Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) program. The November 27 program will introduce the concept of a medical-legal partnership and detail how these interdisciplinary partnerships can be developed and maintained between representatives of hospital-based legal, clinical, and social work leadership, external law firms, and patients. Presenters will include representatives from Mount Sinai Health System, Rochester Regional Health, and LegalHealth, a division of the New York Legal Assistance Group.