The Health Information Exchange Deadline

Friday’s deadline, November 16, calls for each state, including Wisconsin, to give the federal government a “blueprint” for a Health Information Exchange.  State exchanges compare the benefits and costs of insurance policies and post the results online so people and employers can choose which are the best values for them.  They will also make electronic patient records accessible for treatment and research for the public health.   As I noted in my election-eve blog post, exchanges (also called HIEs) are central to health care reform by making better consumer choices possible.

State blueprints would resolve such choices as whether the exchange will be a private non-profit company or a state agency, and what consent and protections are in place for patient privacy.  Overall, a state can choose whether its exchange will be run by the state, in a partnership with the federal government, or by the federal government.  If a state doesn’t provide a blueprint, its exchange will be formed and run according the rules and models in federal regulations that will be issued soon. 

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Incarceration and Collateral Damage: Prof. Traci Burch to Speak at Marquette on Nov. 29

We live in an era of unprecedented mass incarceration.  Since the mid-1970’s, America’s imprisonment rate has quintupled, reaching heights otherwise unknown in the western world.  We embarked on this incarceration binge with little understanding of what impact it would have on families and communities.  The past fifteen years, however, have witnessed a great outpouring of research and writing on the collateral effects of imprisonment.  Those who work in the criminal-justice system should be — and I think increasingly are — knowledgeable about the real impact that their work has on the lives of the many human beings who are connected to each incarcerated person.

Practitioners (and students) who would like to learn more about this important issue will have a wonderful opportunity to do so in two weeks, when Professor Traci Burch of Northwestern University comes to Marquette Law School to speak on the “The Collateral Consequences of Incarceration.”  Here is the description:

Dr. Burch will discuss the effects of mass incarceration on families and communities on Thursday, November 29th. This talk is based in part on her forthcoming book, Punishment and Participation: How Criminal Convictions Threaten American Democracy (University of Chicago Press). Dr. Burch will discuss how criminal justice policies shape disease, crime, domestic partner relationships, children and voting participation in low-income communities.

This event is co-sponsored by Marquette’s Department of Political Science, Law School, Klinger College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, and Institute for Urban Life.

The talk will begin at 5:15, with an informal reception and light refreshments to follow.  Additional information and a link to register for the talk are here.

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Teaching, Technology, and Eckstein Hall

There is convergence of ideas about teaching and technology around the Law School lately. The Law School is holding idea sessions as part of our strategic planning process.  A significant part of the discussion involves teaching: effectiveness, learners, full and part-time education.  Earlier this week Douglas Fisher published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on “flipping” his database course at Vanderbilt. Flipping a course refers to taking the in-class lecture component and moving it to an online component, usually accomplished by recording the lecture. Earlier this summer I attended a presentation by Professor Norman Garland (Southwestern School of Law) who flipped his Evidence course and reported on the process and results. These threads all come together this week for me.

We haven’t flipped any classes here but we have blended (a term Garland prefers to flipping) a few. Some MULS faculty have been long time adopters of technology both in the classroom and outside. Many have electronic course pages, electronic supplements, electronic casebooks, and even video webcasts of course supplements. Several faculty here have blended some of their traditional in-class instruction with required out-of-class viewing of lectures. The MULS faculty who have blended their classes use the out-of-class lecture to establish the basics of the topic, which means in-class instruction can focus less on establishing the topic and more about exploring its nuances and its applications.

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