YLS-Cornell Med Collaboration Publishes on Brain Injury Rights

For the past two years, the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy and the Consortium for the Advanced Study of Brain Injury (CASBI) at Weill Cornell Medical College and Rockefeller University have been partners in a highly collaborative research venture about brain injury at the intersection of law, medicine, and ethics.

Led by Joseph J. Fins, M.D., M.A.C.P., the E. William Davis, Jr., M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Medicine, Bioethics, and the Law at Yale Law School, along with Michael Ulrich, J.D., M.P.H., Research Scholar, Senior Health Law Fellow, and Lecturer in Law, the group has now authored four articles, including one just published in the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics entitled “Whither the ‘Improvement Standard’? Coverage for Severe Brain Injury after Jimmo v. Sebelius." The group's focus has been on the Jimmo case, which challenged the use of an improvement standard for Medicare coverage of services, and about reconceptualizing the rights of patients with severe brain injury as disability rights and identifying gaps in the law that could better serve this population.

During his research for his recently published book, Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics, and the Struggle for Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Fins interviewed families struggling to navigate the health care system and gain insurance coverage for rehabilitation and other essential services. These patients were frequently denied coverage because of the misapplication of the “improvement standard,” which was the basis of the litigation in Jimmo. The group at YLS aimed to reach a broad audience of lawyers, physicians, and policymakers to shed light on the challenges experienced by this underserved and vulnerable population and improve access to care and rehabilitation. The student coauthors were Megan Wright ’16, Claudia Kraft ’15, Alix Rogers ’15, Marina Romani ’16, and Samantha Godwin ’16 LLM.