Q&A with Woody Thorne

Woody Thorne

Title: Vice President, Community Affairs
Organization:  Southern Illinois Healthcare
Years in Legal Practice: Has been with SIH for 9 Years and directs the marketing, fund development, and community benefits efforts of the organization.
MLP Affiliaton: Medical-Legal Partnership of Southern Illinois
How were you introduced to MLP?  Through the organization’s dedicated Community Benefits department.  Upon learning of the model in 2002 through a national media article, and speaking with a potential partner, the initiative was piloted and since expanded substantially.

Q: How has Southern Illinois Healthcare addressed the challenge of creating and sustaining a medical-legal partnership across a large service area?

A: As a model that’s being implemented in a primarily rural setting with multiple partners, sustainability is a challenging issue. The Medical-Legal Partnership of Southern Illinois is being sustained through the commitment of the individuals and organizations dedicated to improving the health of the patients we serve. Implemented using a decentralized referral system, the model requires a greater degree of coordination, but the partners providing the legal services and those making the referrals have been very effective due to this shared sense of commitment and open communication.

Q: How closely does Southern Illinois Healthcare track the cases you refer to your legal partners?

A: Since the initial start of the pilot project, all the partners committed to tracking the results of the work of the partnership’s staff attorney and the associated personnel. This was important for the purpose of ensuring that there is coordination among all involved. Equally, and even more important, is the need to assess the impact and ultimate outcome for the patient.  Additionally, as Southern Illinois Healthcare is providing funding through its Community Benefits department for the partnership to implement its work. Therefore, information has been tracked that would allow for a secondary data evaluation to determine the impact of the project to the organization and the overall health system in the community. Staff has the ability to point back to every case that’s been referred to the partnership: what legal services have been rendered and what needs are being fulfilled by the work of the attorney and partnership staff. All of this is helping to inform those involved about the extent to which this assistance has contributed our patient’s lives being improved.

Q: What are the benefits of that careful record-keeping?

A: The type of initial, and then secondary, data analysis that has been done has allowed us, number one, to be able to demonstrate for ourselves that the project is having an impact. As previously stated, Southern Illinois Healthcare is investing resources through our Community Benefits department to support the partnership’s staff attorney and the social worker who are employed by the regional legal aide agency, Land of Lincoln Legal Services. As a hospital corporation, with many demands on the organization’s resources, this record-keeping enables us to know that we are not only doing the right work but that we are working within the strategic framework of the organization.

Q: From an administrative perspective, what are the benefits for SIH of implementing a medical-legal partnership?

A: Southern Illinois Healthcare values collaboration and achieves much of its work in the community through its work with many community partners. A joint effort that involves the medical and legal community with a goal of improving the lives of those we identify as most in need and mutually serve, makes good common sense. Much of the partnership’s work has been assisting our patients with the establishment of their eligibility for public and private assistance programs. Through that work, the health care system has received an ancillary benefit of being compensated for charges that these patients have owed to physicians and organizations providing care. So, there’s been a corresponding financial return on the investment to the community in the resources that we commit to this project as well.

We are seeing improved outcomes in the lives of those that we are serving through increased access to services, which is our primary goal. At the same time, the health system has been improved through greater efficiencies by way of additional reimbursements coming back to the health system for those people who previously did not have a payer source.