The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Baltimore School of Law will jointly launch what is believed to be the nation’s first academic center for medicine and law that focuses on the health care provider.

The center will foster meaningful collaboration between the two professions, so that doctors will better understand the legal issues that affect their daily practice while lawyers will gain a greater appreciation for the real-world issues involved in the practice of medicine.

Frederick Levy, a Johns Hopkins emergency doctor, who also holds a law degree, will serve as the senior co-director of the new center. Gregory Dolin, also a physician and attorney, will serve as the other co-director. Dolin will join the faculty of the University of Baltimore School of Law this year.

Levy said that the center, which is expected to open in July, comes at an important crossroads, as doctors are increasingly faced with keeping up with court rulings and state and regulatory changes that affect their practice of medicine, while lawyers are generally unfamiliar with the complex challenges that doctors must deal with on a day-to-day basis.

“The new center’s goal will be to promote more understanding between the two professions. In today’s world, doctors and lawyers are used to facing each other in a courtroom,” says Levy, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins. “This center will be aimed at shifting some of the focus from the courtroom to the classroom.”

Phillip J. Closius, dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law, says that the school is honored to be collaborating with The Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to establish the center.

“Our institutions believe that health care issues can best be resolved through cooperative efforts by the medical and legal professions,” says Closius. “I am confident that the center will become a significant national voice in the health care law discussions that are certain to come.”

Levy said that the center will be unique in that while some existing health law centers focus on either law students or have a policy or public health concentration, the new center will highlight the health provider and how clinicians and attorneys interact with and understand one another.

Among the initiatives that the center expects to develop:

• graduate-level training and educational programs in legal medicine for attorneys and physicians
• a set of core competencies in law and medicine for health care providers
•  the nation’s first peer-reviewed journal in law and medicine
• and health law policy and position statements.

In addition to research publications, and other national platforms, the center will promote and publicize its work via its website, which is expected to be up by July. Finally, the center will sponsor regional and national symposia and conferences on a variety of key health law topics such as:

• access to health care
• patient safety
• medical malpractice and tort reform
• health insurance reimbursement
• bioethics
• informed consent
• and disaster medicine