Medical-Legal Partnership Origin Story: People’s Community Clinic in Austin

Description

The same year that People’s Community Clinic in Austin became a Federally Qualified Health Center in 2012, it began offering on-site legal services to its patients. Ask the health care providers and administrators at People’s if it was weird to suddenly have a lawyer walking around, consulting on cases and seeing patients, and the answer you’ll get from everyone is pretty much the same: “No. That’s just the kind of place People’s is.”

In the first in a series of medical-legal partnership origin stories, the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership traces the Austin team’s planning process, how the nuts and bolts of the partnership came together, and how it’s expanded over time. Through interviews with more than a dozen front-line staff and administrators, the story also looks at how legal services fit in the health center’s broader social determinants of health strategy. Partners share why they think the real value of medical-legal partnership is in using legal expertise to inform clinical processes so that the health center is as safe and empowering a place for patients to receive care as possible.

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Author

• Kate Marple, Director of Communications & Senior Research Scientist, National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership

This case study was published by the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership.

Acknowledgement

This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under cooperative agreement U30CS26936, award title “Training and Technical Assistance National Cooperative Agreements (NCAs)” for $449,748. Zero percent of this project is financed with non-federal sources. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government