Resolving Healthcare Disputes

Mediation and arbitration can be valuable tools in the healthcare setting to address disputes, conflicts, and legal issues.

Mediation in Healthcare:
Mediation involving a neutral third party, helps parties in conflict to communicate, identify common ground, and reach a mutually acceptable resolution. In healthcare, mediation can be used for:
-Resolving patient-provider disputes, such as medical malpractice claims or disagreements over treatment options.
-Addressing conflicts among healthcare staff, whether between doctors, nurses, administrators, or other personnel.
-Facilitating communication between patients and families when making difficult medical decisions.
-Navigating disputes related to medical insurance, providers or between Provider groups.

Arbitration in Healthcare:
Arbitration involving an arbitrator who listens to both sides of a dispute and makes a binding decision (similar to a court judgment) can be useful in healthcare for:
-Resolving medical malpractice claims outside of court, offering a quicker and more private resolution.
-Handling disputes arising from contractual agreements between healthcare providers and institutions, or between healthcare entities and insurance companies.
-Resolving disputes over healthcare costs.

Both mediation and arbitration offer advantages over litigation.  Quicker resolution, cost savings, choice of arbitrator skill sets, flexibility and greater privacy all make mediation and arbitration an attractive choice where issues of judicial precedent or public policy are not of concern.

Whilst NHS Resolution has had success with mediation in a number of cases, it is still a relatively ‘unknown’ method of resolving issues amongst clinicians, patients and providers alike. Given it’s great number of advantages over litigation, perhaps (alternative) Dispute Resolution should be the ‘go to’ method before litigation is contemplated?