I started this blog so that those who attended the symposium and those interested in this subject matter could talk to each other, creating a space for learning and connection across our various professions.
A few thoughts about the symposium, held on April 7, 2010 in San Francisco, sponsored by three sections of the ABA and chaired by me:
the symposium focused on collaborative practices in situations involving adverse medical events/medical error/bad outcomes;
one session focused on other areas of the law in which collaborative practices have been shown to be effective: business disputes, employment, and probate cases;
another session focused on disclosure of adverse medical events, policies and practices of TJC, the perspective of a family member who had lost her mother to an adverse medical event, and policies and practices of a medical liability insurer;
the keynotes included Sandy Coletta, CEO of Kent Hospital in Rhode Island, James Woods, plaintiff in a medical malpractice case against Kent Hospital, and Mark Decof, James Woods' attorney. This case settled during the third week of an angry, adversarial trial due to the efforts of these three individuals, a collaboration that will continue between Woods and Coletta. Coletta asked for a meeting during the third week of trial, at which she acknowledged that Kent Hospital had made a mistake, apologized and asked James Woods to work with her on a newly-funded Michael J. Woods Institute to redesign healthcare delivery at Kent Hospital. The parties spoke at length of the litigation process, trial and resolution. Many of the attendees came to hear the story of the resolution in this "unsettlable" case, a story of tradegy, heartbreak, resolution and collaboration. Coletta and Decof offered many hopeful suggestions about the process they went through to get to resolution, helping me, and I hope many others, understand why litigation often doesn't work and why lawyers need to rethink the process so they will no longer be thought of as "roadblocks". I wrote their story for the Daily Journal in a two-part article, quoting them extensively, available on the articles page of my website, www.ServantLawyership.com. The articles are titled "Healing Practices in Law and Medicine" and "A New Legal Approach to Health Care". I am very grateful to the three of them for sharing their experiences of a transformative settlement process, one that appears to have brought some healing for all after a devastating loss for the Woods' family.
The Second keynote was Kathy Bryan, CEO of CPR, headquartered in NYC, who spoke about The New Collaborative Paradigm, a term that encompasses many of the collaborative processes used to resolve disputes without litigation. She spoke of the many options in what has been referred to as the "collaborative tool kit".
We then worked through a collaborative case hypothetical with attendees taking the roles of patient, attorneys for both plaintiff and defendant, and the various parties, including physician and hospital, and process facilitators, so that everyone had the experience of the collaborative process.
I hope that anyone who attended or is interested in this subject matter will jump in and blog with me. I'm looking forward to all your ideas and suggestions.
