July 17, 2012
For information, Contact:
Anne Eldridge
Anne.eldridge@louisville.edu
502.852.0943, 502.419.0973
Doctors and Lawyers Join Forces for UofL Pediatric Patients
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – UofL Pediatrics patients with health-related legal issues can
now have a lawyer on their health care team, thanks to Doctors & Lawyers for Kids. This
medical-legal partnership, which was piloted at University of Louisville Children
&Youth Project, has expanded and will be available to patients at Kosair Children’s
Hospital and UofL Pediatrics’ other general pediatrics offices, UofL PediatricsStonestreet and UofL Pediatrics-Broadway.
Doctors & Lawyers for Kids is a collaboration of UofL Pediatrics, Kosair
Children’s Hospital, the Louisville Bar Association and the Legal Aid Society. Its
mission is to address social, economic and environmental issues that can negatively affect
children’s health.
“Simply fending off germs and accounting for family history isn’t always enough
to keep a child well. Sometimes legal issues force children to live in unhealthy
environments,” said Faye Jones, M.D., UofL General Pediatrics division chief. “Thanks
to the foresight and generosity of Louisville’s legal community, we are able to step
beyond diagnosis and offer preventive legal services in a medical setting.”
As a part of their ongoing care, doctors seek underlying reasons for children’s
illnesses and refer them as needed to an in-house legal team that includes a full-time
lawyer and part-time paralegal.
“Because lawyers have expertise in poverty law, they understand the challenges
many families face in their daily lives and are well-schooled in getting those issues
resolved efficiently,” said Jeffrey A. Been, executive director of the Legal Aid Society.
Cases that can’t be resolved at the clinic-level are referred to the to the Legal Aid
Society, the Louisville Bar Association’s Pro Bono Consortium, or to supervised law
students in the Legal Clinic of the UofL Brandeis School of Law.
Doctors & Lawyers for Kids helps with a wide range of problems for indigent
patients, including public benefits as well as those related to housing, custody,
immigration and tax issues. The medical-legal partnership does not provide
representation in criminal law cases or in cases of liability that are generally handled on a
contingency fee basis.
Doctors & Lawyers for Kids was conceived in 2009 when the Louisville Pro
Bono Consortium tapped one of its members to look into a medical-legal partnership for
the Louisville community. Martha Hasselbacher, a retired general counsel at Norton
Healthcare, professor of Health Law at the UofL Brandeis School of Law and past
president of the Louisville Bar Association and Legal Aid Society, had the background
and connections needed to undertake the initiative.
“Together, doctors and lawyers can work to avert some of these health crises for
our community’s neediest children,” Hasselbacher explained. “While popular culture
often portrays doctors and lawyers as adversaries, when we work together for the benefit
of patients, we can be a powerful force.”
The program was piloted at Children &Youth Project last summer. C&Y is a large
primary care teaching practice of UofL Pediatrics. Its multidisciplinary health team cares
for approximately 9,500 children, primarily those with the greatest medical and
socioeconomic needs. The Stonestreet practice cares for 6,200 patients and the Broadway
practice sees about 8,000 children.
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UofL Pediatrics
Meeting the healthcare needs of the region’s children
UofL Pediatrics is a network of approximately 180 pediatric specialists, all University of
Louisville School of Medicine faculty. These physicians care for patients, conduct research and
train the next generation of pediatricians. Our pediatric specialists and residents-in-training
provide the vast majority of general and subspecialty medical care at Kosair Children’s Hospital.
We care for newborns at nine other Kentucky and Indiana hospitals. We also see patients at
outpatient clinics across Kentucky and southern Indiana. More information is available at
louisville.edu/medschool/pediatrics.
Legal Aid Society
The mission of the Legal Aid Society is to pursue justice for people in poverty. We provide free
legal services to the most disadvantaged in our community. We fight on your behalf when your
health, safety, and stability are unjustly threatened. Last year, Legal Aid helped more than 5,000
people who had nowhere else to turn. In cases in which Legal Aid represented a client in
negotiation with a third party or at a court appearance, 89 percent were resolved favorably for our
clients.
Kosair Children’s Hospital
For more than a century, Kosair Children’s Hospital and its predecessor hospitals have cared for
the children of Kentucky and Southern Indiana without regard to their families’ ability to pay.
Kosair Children’s Hospital is Kentucky’s only full-service, free-standing pediatric care facility
dedicated exclusively to caring for children and is an advocate for the health and well-being of all
children. The 263-bed hospital, supported by the Children’s Hospital Foundation, serves as the
primary pediatric teaching facility for the University of Louisville School of Medicine. In 2007,
Kosair Children’s received the prestigious Magnet designation recognizing excellence in nursing
from the American Nurses Credentialing Center. Kosair Children’s is one of the top children’s
hospitals in the United States as ranked in U.S. News Media Group’s 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012
editions of America’s Best Children’s Hospitals. More information is available at
KosairChildrens.com.