Health Care Corporatization as a Catalyst for Wellness Legal Partnerships

The increasing presence of private equity investment in physician practices reveals that current health law practice sites such as in-house, corporate law firms, and Medical Legal Partnerships (MLPs) are ill equipped to address patient harm from health care corporatization. A new type of health law practice is needed to address the adverse impact health care corporatization is having on health care purchasers (primarily employers and patients) and physicians. I label this new health law practice the Wellness Legal Partnership (WLP), modeled after the Medical Legal Partnership (MLP). WLP lawyers can look to systems leadership theory, lawyer fiduciary duties, and health justice frameworks as guides to combat the adverse impacts of health care corporatization. WLPs would work best rooted in corporate health and wellness benefit settings, and they would improve patient wellbeing using a three-fold approach of individual advocacy, organizational change, and systemic change.