Last Fall I was invited by the Yale China Law Center to travel to Shanghai to participate as a US expert at a series of China-US workshops on best practices in medical dispute mediation. At the time, I didn’t know much about the Chinese medical system or how they handled disputes about medical care.
The immense population of Shanghai (over 24 million) gave some clue to the scope of both the challenges and their potential solutions. Legislation passed in 2010 helped to set up People’s Medical Dispute Mediation Committees in all 17 Shanghai provinces, and over 9000 mediations have been conducted in the past three years – which I believe makes it the world’s largest, unless you know of others.
The immense population of Shanghai (over 24 million) gave some clue to the scope of both the challenges and their potential solutions. Legislation passed in 2010 helped to set up People’s Medical Dispute Mediation Committees in all 17 Shanghai provinces, and over 9000 mediations have been conducted in the past three years – which I believe makes it the world’s largest, unless you know of others.
 | The challenges in China, like the US, are many. |
Both to the healthcare system as well as the disputing process, and I was privileged to share best practices with my Chinese counterparts, including the Medical Ombuds/Mediator model. We were graced with excellent translators, and so were able to demonstrate how we might handle a disclosure conversation in a very difficult case, and then conducted a family meeting with the physician, family of a harmed patient and mediator to demonstrate how we might reach a non-litigative resolution that met core needs.
So grateful to Yale and my Chinese colleagues for extending the international hand of friendship and collaborative problem-solving in this growing field of medical dispute resolution!
So grateful to Yale and my Chinese colleagues for extending the international hand of friendship and collaborative problem-solving in this growing field of medical dispute resolution!
RSS Feed