Thousands of immigrants seeking asylum are arriving at the border each month, fleeing war, poverty, violence, and discrimination. Our clinical network reports to us that many of these immigrants have urgent health needs that are going unmet. Exacerbated by a dangerous and long migration, often precipitated by a lifetime of toxic stress and traumatic events, and sometimes the direct result of violence in their homelands, these illnesses and injuries can be debilitating and deadly -- and they are too often overlooked while in detention. A new Human Rights Watch report uncovered “subpar and dangerous practices” that constitute “systemic deficits in immigration detention facility health care.”
Medical Review for Immigrants (MRI) seeks to change that. This MCN initiative, launched in June 2018 [1], links clinicians with pro-bono attorneys to get immigrants with urgent health needs out of detention -- and then uses MCN's Health Network to get them urgently into care.
Through MRI, a physician is mobilized to quickly provide a Letter of Declaration for an attorney to request humanitarian parole for a seriously ill immigrant client, which enables the client to be released to receive essential care. Once released, MRI then ensures that the client reaches the treatment she needs, with records transfer, follow-up services, and case management via Health Network. MRI leans on MCN's clinical network of over 10,000 constituents and over 30 years of experience working with health care providers coast to coast, and utilizes MCN’s Health Network, a proven cost-effective bridge case management system for patients who are moving while needing ongoing care.
MRI is a program of Health Network. Learn more about the basics if Health Network here [2].
For more information, contact us at mri@migrantclinician.org [3] or 512-579-4509
If you are a physician who is interested in being trained to complete documentation and review for humanitarian parole, fill out the form below to be contacted about future MRI trainings.
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