Mediation

Physicians’ practices lives are dominated by contracts. Disputes between physicians and other parties – employers, hospitals, health plans, colleague physicians, regulatory agencies, patients – usually are first governed by contract language or bylaws’ provisions or regulations or other legal documents. Increasingly, however, physicians prefer to resolve disputes not by accessing the legal system but by mediating differences.

Alternative dispute resolution processes take on two primary forms: arbitration and mediation. Arbitration is more formal, often guided by processes set forth by reference (i.e., rules of the American Arbitration Association) in a contract, and generally works toward an arbitrator’s decision that is binding upon the parties; arbitration provisions in contracts may effectively foreclose the parties’ ability to litigate a contract claim. Mediation is a process that all parties to a dispute agree to with discussion and results facilitated, but not dictated, by a neutral third party; mediation is non-binding.

• AMA Resources
• Iowa Medicine Article
• American Health Lawyers Association