14 | Fall 2021 | BAEC Bulletin In the Public Service Neighborhood Legal Services
Neighborhood Legal Services and Medical Legal Partnerships in our Community
COVID-19 has placed a spotlight not only on the United States’ health care system nationally, but also has placed a spotlight on the disparities of health care across demographics including race, ethnicity, and economic status. In addition, COVID-19 has renewed the conversation about the social determinants of health, which are defined as the “conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play that affect a wide range of health and quality of life risks and outcomes.” While the COVID-19 global pandemic is an unprecedented event in modern times, the disparities in health care and the social determinants of health unfortunately are not. A person’s health is affected by more than the quality of health care they receive. A person’s environment, level of income, insurance, access to food, utilities, housing, education, and employment account for more than 60 percent of their health. These social determinants of health have an enormous impact on a person’s health outcome, and cannot necessarily be treated by a health care provider, no matter the quality of care. Due to deep-rooted inequitable economic and societal systems, low-income communities face even greater obstacles obtaining basic needs such as food, shelter, employment, housing, and education, all of which adversely affect their health outcomes. Health care providers have started to attempt to address these issues by, among other things, screening patients for social problems in an attempt to uncover factors that influence the patient’s health. Once these problems are identified, the issue remains – what can be done now to address them? This is where Medical Legal Partnerships (“MLP”) like those implemented by Neighborhood Legal Services (“NLS”) can play such an important role in the positive health outcomes of many patients living with low incomes and disabilities in our community. Medical Legal Partnerships are about building an integrated health care system that better addresses health-harming legal needs by embedding attorneys on-site and leveraging legal services and expertise to advance individual and population health. NLS has brought Medical Legal Partnerships to Western New York through its work with Evergreen Health Services and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. NLS attorneys help to address upstream issues that allow the health care team to do their jobs more efficiently. When embedded at a health care provider, NLS lawyers can directly resolve specific problems for individual patients, while also helping staff navigate policy/legal barriers, transform practices, and identify systemic issues that can often be mired in federal, state, and local laws and require legal expertise to resolve.
NLS attorneys take a holistic approach and screen individuals for a variety of legal issues with the goal of eliminating health harming legal issues so that patients can better focus on their health outcomes. NLS’ MLP attorneys work with social work teams, care coordinators and medical professionals who make referrals and help identify recurring issues and common problems to provide efficient solutions for patients. NLS helps patients combat
Michael Reiser
Larry E. Waters, Jr.
health harming legal needs such as food insecurity, housing insecurity, access to health care and many others by providing legal assistance with: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance eligibility/application denials; Medicaid denials (transportation, durable medical equipment requests, e.g.); Social Security Disability (“SSD”) and Supplemental Security Income (“SSI”) benefits denials and overpayments; Family Law matters, evictions; advanced directives; simple wills; powers of attorneys; name changes and more. If a Neighborhood Legal Services attorney can: -prevent or delay an eviction, that patient has access to consistent housing on their terms and a safe place to maintain their treatment regimen, instead of living in constant fear of not having a roof over their head; -overturn a SNAP denial, that patient now has access to food and can then utilize their monthly income to purchase needed medication and other necessities; -obtain a student loan discharge based on a disability, that patient can now plan their financial and medical decisions without the weight of large consumer debt hanging over them; -obtain a gender affirming name change, that patient is now able to change legal documents to match their identity so they can attend medical appointments and/or other health related services with ID which matches their identity; -assist a patient with appointing a power of attorney and health care proxy, that patient can now focus on their treatment plan
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