Baker & Daniels Lawyers Helping Cancer Patients in Pro Bono Partnership

A group of Baker & Daniels lawyers spent a May afternoon at Wishard Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis, touring the infusion clinic where patients receive chemotherapy, meeting with a social worker and receiving tuberculosis skin tests as a prerequisite for working with patients, The AmLaw Daily reported in its story, "Pro Bono 2010: Bridging the Divide."

The firm's lawyers are volunteers with EMBRACE, a program that provides holistic services to female cancer patients, the story continued. Working out of the hospital's clinic, the lawyers help patients draw up guardianship and estate planning documents.

The pro bono work, The AmLaw Daily reported, is the latest initiative from the Medical-Legal Partnership, a project launched by the Indiana Health Advocacy Coalition (IHAC) in January 2008. The partnership operates at three hospitals in Indianapolis and consists of a multidisciplinary team of doctors, lawyers, nurses, public health professionals and social workers that collaborate on individual patients' needs. Patients can sign waivers that permit open communication among the different professionals.

Thirteen Baker & Daniels lawyers volunteered for the pro bono project after Anna Obergfell, the director of the Wishard Medical-Legal Partnership and a former Baker & Daniels summer associate, reached out to the firm during its Women's Forum last spring.

"Participants are much more aware that patient advocacy does not just mean medical treatment," Brita Horvath, Baker & Daniels' diversity and pro bono coordinator, told The AmLaw Daily. "Legal advocacy can improve medical outcomes, often in a way that's faster and cheaper." The partnership focuses on treating the patient as a whole, with the lawyer becoming part of the patient's treatment team.

Baker & Daniels lawyers attend doctor-lawyer training sessions, the story reported. They field referrals on cases involving immigration, housing conditions (such as mold or bug infestation), end-of-life preparation, guardianship and public benefits. In December 2008, the firm helped an undocumented resident get heat in her apartment, The AmLaw Daily story reported. She was relying on a small space heater to provide warmth for herself and her children.

"We went out and took pictures of the place," Horvath told The AmLaw Daily. "It was terrible." After lawyers intervened, the landlord cooperated in making the necessary improvements.

Medical-legal partnerships have recently caught the national spotlight, the story said. In June, the American Medical Association (AMA) passed a resolution encouraging physicians to collaborate with lawyers, social workers and nurses to improve their patients' well-being. That same day, the American Bar Association issued a statement in support of the AMA's resolution.