Guide to implementing MLP performance measures

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership is engaged in efforts to develop, implement, and test medical-legal partnership performance measures in order to: 1) assess and evaluate the systems that drive the MLP approach to health care delivery and their impact; 2) develop a set of best practices for the field regarding data collection and reporting on MLP-related measures; and 3) engage in meaningful process and quality improvement at the local and national MLP levels. As part of these efforts, we developed an initial set of seven performance measures.

MLP Performance Measures Handbook Cover“NCMLP Performance Measures Handbook”

By the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership

Click here to download the free handbook.

This handbook is a detailed accounting of these seven measures and how to use them is included in the Medical-Legal Partnership Performance Measures Handbook.

These measures were identified through a combination of the social determinants of health framework, interviews with individual MLP programs, and a survey of the existing literature. The measures are currently being tested in the field.

  • Measure 1: Percent of healthcare partner staff trained in MLP
  • Measure 2: Percent of patients screened for health-harming legal needs in a given population
  • Measure 3: Percent of patients with at least one health-harming legal need who are treated/addressed by the healthcare organization
  • Measure 4: Percent of patients who are referred to civil legal aid services and receive a legal screening/intake
  • Measure 6: Average financial benefit received by a MLP patient-client
  • Measure 7: Estimated financial benefit received by the healthcare organization per patient due to the MLP intervention(s)