Pecar Health Center, Wishard Health Services Medical-Legal Partnership

n May a group of attorneys from Baker & Daniels spent the afternoon at Wishard Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis. They toured the infusion clinic where patients receive chemotherapy, met with a social worker, and received tuberculosis skin tests, a prerequisite for working with patients. The attorneys are volunteers with EMBRACE, a program that provides holistic services to female cancer patients. The lawyers, working out of the hospital's clinic, help patients draw up guardianship and estate-planning documents.

Practitioners involved with the state’s first medical-legal partnership are excited about the cases they’ve taken on, as they help patients who have unmet legal needs that can make medical conditions persist, if not worsen.

Last year Dawn Haut, M.D., added a new—and unconventional—member to the health care team at the Pecar Health Center in Indianapolis: an attorney. Through a medical-legal partnership, the lawyer now helps Haut manage important health concerns of her patients. "MLPs are collaborations between health care providers and lawyers designed to address and mitigate social determinants of health and illness," says Chad Priest, R.N., treasurer of the Indiana Health Advocacy Council and an attorney at Baker and Daniels in Indianapolis.