Guides and Resources: Health Care Legal Research: Practice Resources and Current Issues

Step One: News and Current Awareness

If you aren't sure where to start in your research or are having trouble picking a topic, the best place to begin is with current awareness sources. News articles, blogs, and social media are a good way to find current problems within the area of law you are researching. Browse news sources to get ideas, then--once you have narrowed it down--sign up for news alerts on your topic so you can keep on top of developments.

Bloomberg BNA Health Practice Center
Landing page for all of Bloomberg BNA's Health content, divided into subtopics such as In Focus, Practical Guidance, Fast Answers, Legal Analysis, News & Analysis, Health Care Reform Tracking, Federal Health Legislation, and more. Set alerts, subscribe to newsletters, and set the practice center as your home page.
Westlaw Edge Health Law Practice Area
This is the comprehensive practice center for health law on Westlaw. Includes cases, statutes, secondary sources, proposed and enacted legislation and regulation, and a "Tools" section with news and policy tracking.
Lexis+ Healthcare Law Topic
From the main page, go to "Topics," and then choose "Healthcare Law." From this page, you can select a variety of subtopics, and then open them further, or scroll to the bottom and search within the main topic.
Google News Alerts
Once you have narrowed down your topic, try setting up a Google News Alert with specific keywords for your topic. You can then set alerts to update you daily, weekly, or monthly. You can also narrow your alert to a specific region, type of internet resource, and language.

Setting Alerts

There are health care related practice area concentrations in several commercial databases available to you. These are an excellent place to look over available treatises, find current news stories, and then locate the regulations or statutes that are being discussed.

Bloomberg Newsletter Subscriptions
Sign up for Bloomberg BNA newsletters to be delivered to your inbox daily on specific topics. Health law-related topics include Coronavirus Outbreak, Health Law & Business, and Pharma & Life Sciences. You may also sign up for alerts on certain items, such as dockets and BCite reports, by looking for a bell at the top right of the screen.
Lexis+ Alerts
From the top bar, click on the three vertical dots to open up a sub-menu. Click on "Alerts." If you haven't created any alerts yet, you'll get a message asking you to click her to get help creating an alert. This will bring up a pop-up help window. If you type in "alert," or "create alert," you will get more than you ever needed to know about creating more types of alerts than you ever thought possible.
Westlaw Edge Alerts and Notifications
Sign into Westlaw and click on "Notifications" on the top right next to "Favorites." You can set up a number of different alerts, from WestClip to publication alerts, and create newsletters as well. Follow the instructions to create custom alerts. Just remember to include an end date, or you'll be getting alerts forever.
Google News Alerts
Once you have narrowed down your topic, try setting up a Google News Alert with specific keywords for your topic. You can then set alerts to update you daily, weekly, or monthly. You can also narrow your alert to a specific region, type of internet resource, and language.

Help from Practitioners

Professional organizations are a great place to start looking for current events, issues facing practitioners, and conflicts within the health law arena.

American Health Law Association
This professional organization of health lawyers provides resources to practitioners in the health law field. They also publish the Journal of Health and Life Sciences law.
Lexology
Focused on business and commercial law, but searchable topics include Healthcare & Life Sciences.
TIPS -- Tort, Trial, and Insurance Practice Section of the ABA
Publications and CLE materials from this organization can provide helpful guidance on insurance law issues, including the Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Law Journal.
The American Board of Professional Liability Attorneys
The ABPLA is an organization or lawyers who work in medical and legal malpractice. Their newsletter, the Malpractice New Digest, comes out weekly and aggregates top malpractice news items from several different sources.
American Hospitals Association
The AHA's Resource Center links to publications, reports, and data collected by the organization.