Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

The Connecticut Department of Public Health experimented with the use of mediation to resolve an intractable dispute pitting several medical specialties against dental surgeons. Find out how this experiment turned out.

It is hard to find information about all the creative ways in which mediation is being used. Were such information readily available, it would no doubt inspire still more new uses of the process.

One person who did not need inspiration from other users of mediation to decide that the process would be worth trying is J. Robert Galvin, M.D., M.P.H., Connecticut’s Commissioner of the Department of Public Health (CTDPH). He had a thorny regulatory problem to deal with, one that pitted certain medical specialties against dental surgeons. So he called on Karen Jalkut, District Vice President of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) at her office in Hartford, to learn how the AAA could help the department resolve it. Jalkut discussed mediation with Galvin and suggested several mediators for the participants to consider. They ultimately selected Harry Mazadoorian, an experienced arbitrator and mediator who is the Distin-guish-ed Senior Fel-low at the Quinnipiac School of Law’s Center on Dispute Res-olution, and formerly served as chairman of the Board of Directors of the hospital now called the Hospital of Central Connecticut.