Resources
We publish research, tools, and lessons learned to help healthcare and legal organizations build and operate medical-legal partnerships and to help funders and policymakers advance medical-legal partnership activities. You can search those resources in the library below.
The library also links to journal articles, authored both by National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership staff and MLP practitioners and researchers from the field, that highlight ways medical-legal partnerships have improved patient health and well-being, the healthcare workforce, and healthcare delivery. A list of these articles with summaries are also available on the Peer-Reviewed Research page.
A Financial Case for a Medical-Legal Partnership: Reducing Lengths of Stay for Inpatient Care
A medical-legal partnership at an academic medical center (AMC) in North Carolina measured the detailed cost savings it provided to the AMC through the provision of legal services to its patients. MLP partners identified guardianship-related delays as the primary driver of extended lengths-of-stay at the AMC. When an MLP attorney was able to expedite guardianship proceedings, they reduced a patient’s lengths-of-stay by approximately 20 days. This led to an annual cost savings of $1,237,500 for the AMC based on an average cost of $825 per day for the hospital for 75 patients requiring guardianship services. Cost savings from these reduced lengths-of-stay alone exceeded MLP program costs by over threefold. The findings were published in The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.
A Data-Driven Approach to Optimizing Medical-Legal Partnership Performance and Joint Advocacy
In this paper, authors discuss ways in which use of data and quality improvement methods at a Cincinnati-based medical-legal partnership (MLP) have facilitated advocacy at both the individual and population levels as healthcare and legal teams collectively pursue better, more equitable outcomes. The MLP team saw a 38 percent reduction in hospitalizations among children referred to the MLP and were able to recover $1.36M in public benefits for patient-families. The MLP was also able to make system-level upgrades to housing (e.g., pest control, new roofs, and ventilation improvements) affecting 700 families after identifying patterns through data sharing and legal advocacy. And MLP partners streamlined SNAP enrollment processes at the county and state levels, driven by advocacy based on observed patterns of delayed benefit access. The findings were published in the The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.
Impacts of a Medical-Legal Partnership on Clinical Capacity to Address Social Determinants of Health
A 16-question survey was emailed to 532 providers in a health system in South Carolina. The survey assessed clinicians’ perception of their role in addressing SDOH needs, the MLP’s impact on their clinical capacity, and the MLP’s ability to remedy patient SDOH needs. Providers who had referred to the MLP indicated higher levels of agreement that SDOH screenings were part of their clinical responsibility and had higher levels of agreement regarding comfort levels for completing SDOH screenings. Geriatric providers reported higher levels of agreement that the MLP reduced clinician stress than pediatric providers. Findings were published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
Medical-Legal Partnerships Facilitate Patient-Provider Cost of Care Conversations: A Multisite Qualitative Study in the U.S.
This study, based on interviews with medical-legal partnership personnel in 10 states, found that having legal staff on-site built healthcare providers’ confidence around addressing health-harming legal needs through effective cost of care conversations, improved patient outcomes, and increased return on investment for health systems. Findings were published in Clinical Nursing Research.
Better Together: A Descriptive Analysis of a Medical-Legal Partnership in Western North Carolina
The study describes the impact of a medical-legal partnership (MLP) between Pisgah Legal Services and the Mountain Area Health Education Center, which serves rural North Carolina counties, over a 24-month period. The MLP was successful in helping to address multiple social needs faced by patients that contribute to worse health status and outcomes. Monetary benefits to patients were $309,902 plus an additional $174,733 from tax returns and the Earned Income Tax Credit. The findings were published in the North Carolina Medical Journal.
Improving Health Outcomes in Vulnerable Populations: The Medical-Legal Partnership-Colorado's Experience
The study evaluated the impact on health outcomes and health care utilization of a MLP housed in a large federally qualified health center in Colorado (MLP-CO). Clients screened for I-HELP™ needs were surveyed at baseline and six months post-enrollment. Overall, 61.4% attributed great/moderate improvements in their health care experience to the MLP-CO.