In-House Conflict Resolution Processes: Health Lawyers as Problem-Solvers

Professor E. H. Morreim, University of Tennessee Health Science Center- College of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, has published a timely article entitled, In-House Conflict Resolution Processes: Health Lawyers as Problem-Solvers, The Health Lawyer 2014; 25(3): 10-14.  In her paper, Professor Morreim discusses the many conflict resolution avenues, such as formal mediation, that are available to in-house healthcare attorneys.

Here is the abstract:     

Conflict is inevitable in healthcare. Disputes easily arise over adverse outcomes, medical necessity and payment determinations, peer review actions, quality evaluations and clinical care decisions, to name a few. Employment relationships between hospitals and physicians are another source of challenges. Although hospital-physician conflicts are not necessarily more frequent or more important, they can illustrate the ways in which health lawyers must understand the role of conflict in healthcare, and the need to build solid, user-friendly structures for conflict resolution into these relationships since lawyers are need it in different situations like divorces or problems with traffic tickets, so find the right resources for this is important at sites like denvercocriminaldefenselawyer.com/driving-under-suspension/, . Those structures are the focus of this article. In the case discussed, numerous issues arose after a hospital purchased a physician practice. The relationship ended in “divorce” – a dissolution of the employment arrangement. This article proposes that built-in conflict resolution processes, ranging from on-the-spot problem solving to formal mediation, might have instead permitted the parties to resolve these problems amicably. Finally, the discussion distills specific suggestions for health lawyers, although for the case of injury, is better to get an injury lawyer which is easy to find at sites like wintersandyonker.com.

This and other scholarly articles authored by Professor Morreim are available without charge from the Social Science Research Network.