On February 28th, Georgia Representative Hank Johnson and Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation that would prohibit pre-dispute mandatory arbitration clauses in employment, consumer, antitrust, and civil rights cases, but allow parties to agree to arbitration in the event a dispute arises. 

The Pew Charitable Trusts (“Pew”) has reportedly issued a call for the establishment of a national body to standardize online dispute resolution (“ODR”) procedures in civil courts across the United States.

Lise Gelernter, Teaching Faculty at SUNY Buffalo Law School, has published a comment titled, “The Impact of Epic Systems in the Labor and Employment Context,” 2019 Journal of Dispute Resolution 115; University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2018-014.

Since the Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”) became effective in 2012, Inter Partes Review (“IPR”) has been a popular legal option for challenging patent validity.

A bill seeking to establish a Texas Institute of Health Care Quality and Efficiency is currently before the Texas Legislature. Senate Bill 8 was authored by Senator Nelson and filed on February 16, 2011. It seeks “to improve health care quality, accountability, and cost containment in this state by encouraging health care provider collaboration, effective health care delivery models, and coordination of health care services.” The bill was referred to the Senate Health & Human Services Committee on February 17th. The full text of the bill is available here. You may monitor this and other bills as they move through the Texas Legislature here. Disputing’s own Holly Hayes has discussed the role of collaborative healthcare in healthcare conflict resolution and reform many times. You may read some of her more recent posts here, here, and here. Technorati Tags: Healthcare, Texas Legislation

by Holly Hayes According to an American Hospital Association (AHA) News report, Don Berwick, M.D., Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, testified on February 10, 2011, at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the impact the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will have on Medicare. Dr. Berwick, said: “building an improved Medicare program and health care delivery system must be a collaborative effort” with states, health care providers and others. “CMS cannot do this alone, and neither can government as a whole,” he said. In response to concerns by Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) about the law’s potential regulatory burden, Berwick said, “My attitude is that this is a partnership with providers and states. I’m not interested in making their jobs harder.” Last March, Disputing posted a New York Times interview with Dr. Howard Brody, Professor of Family Medicine and Director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, which discussed a proposal for health care reform involving physicians. Physicians, Dr. Brody says, are not “innocent bystanders” to increasing health care costs but have made little effort to limit future medical costs. In an editorial published in The New England Journal of Medicine, he writes “If physicians seized the moral high ground, we just might astonish enough other people to change the entire reform debate for the better.” Drs. Berwick and Brody recognize a collaborative partnership is needed if we are to improve our health care delivery system. What are your thoughts on this issue? Technorati Tags: Mediation Holly Hayes is a mediator at Karl Bayer, Dispute Resolution Expert where she focuses on mediation of health care disputes. Holly holds a B.A. from Southern Methodist University and a Masters in Health Administration from Duke University. She can be reached at holly@karlbayer.com.