Friday, September 18, 2009

Health care

Like most folks, I'm interested in the debate on health care that is going on in this country. Being the good neutral, I'm not going to let you know my preferences.

But I got to thinking this morning on the way back from the courthouse: how would I mediate the health care debate?

The health care debate has all of the issues relating to a really sophisticated piece of complex litigation: opinions on all sides from authorities in the field and interesting legal issues (the Wall Street Journal has run pieces discussing the constitutionality--rather, unconstitutionality of the federal government regulating or requiring health care--see WSJ stories here and here and related stories here and here).

If you were appointed to mediate the health care debate, how would you approach the mediation? How would you try to get the parties to "settle" the issue? How would you set up the mediation? How would you help the parties frame the issues?

I'm interested in your thoughts.

Congratulations

Congratulations to me and Re:solutions. We just published our 100th post.

Monday, September 14, 2009

ADR and Healthcare

Here's a very interesting article by Emily P. Walker at medpagetoday.com. In it, she discusses the efficiencies of ADR procedures in the health care arena. She cites a study by Chris Stern Hyman of the Medical Mediation Group that of 19 cases that were mediated, 13 reached an agreement in an average of 2.3 hours. Of the 19 cases, 11 had an apology offered by a hospital system representative, and when the apology occurred, settlement was about two and a half times more frequent then when there was no apology.