Medical Malpractice Authority Joins Zeytoonian Center for Dispute Resolution

WELLESLEY HILLS, Mass.—Dawn Effron, a former medical malpractice litigation attorney and presently an adjunct professor at New England Law Boston (formerly the New England School of Law), has joined the Zeytoonian Center for Dispute Resolution as Of Counsel.

Effron joins the Zeytoonian Center with experience serving as an attorney at New York’s premier medical malpractice firm, now known as Kramer, Dillof, Livingston & Moore; the New York State Department of Health’s Bureau for Professional Medical Conduct; and the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine. She has negotiated multi-million dollar settlements and successfully tried more than 30 cases involving allegations of substandard medical care, fraud, and patient abuse. Among the cases Effron handled at the Massachusetts Board of Medicine was the highly publicized 1994 chemotherapy overdoses at a major Boston-area hospital.

Ten years ago, Effron expanded her practice to include alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and developed a mediation program for the Board of Registration in Medicine. Since then, she has been retained by institutions, including the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, health care practices, and courts to mediate legal disputes involving health care and employment issues. She has also been retained by institutions including the Harvard School of Public Health, New York University, Viacom, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to provide individualized coaching and create customized programs that teach core negotiation and conflict resolution skills.

“Patients and their families are distraught when they experience an adverse medical outcome,” said Effron. “They want to understand what happened, know that they will be protected financially, and receive an apology with assurances that similar errors will not befall others in the future. In the traditional legal system, physicians are advised to disclose nothing and deny blame. As a result, patients resort to legal action and physicians and institutions lose patients because trust is destroyed. Through mediation and collaborative law patients get results that satisfy their core interests while physicians and hospitals reduce costs, improve patient safety and restore trust.”

Since 2004, Effron has been a member of the adjunct faculty at New England Law Boston, teaching negotiation and a mediation clinic. She serves as co-chair of the Boston Bar Association-Boston Municipal Court Alternative Dispute Resolution Task Force, which operates a mediation and pre-trial conferencing program in Boston Municipal Court.

“As a mediator and collaborative attorney, Dawn creates a safe, open environment where all can talk candidly about what matters to them to help resolve a dispute,” said center founder and director Michael Zeytoonian. “Whether a patient, family member, physician, or hospital, each party can articulate their true interests, both monetary and non-monetary, and together find ways to satisfy all of the interests involved. Dawn’s deep experience and skill in facilitating difficult conversations in a wide variety of healthcare situations, including those that take place in the aftermath of an unfortunate medical outcome, will be a great benefit to our clients when it comes to resolving healthcare-related disputes.”

Effron received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her JD from the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. She is a member of the Massachusetts and New York Bar.

For more information, visit www.zeytooniancenter.com or call (781) 489-2270.

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