Major League Baseball had been working with a 2016 collective bargaining agreement between the league and the player’s union. Players’ demands in negotiation included expanded player control over the terms of their contract, particularly for the younger players who are under the control of the team that drafts them for the first six years of their career. Owner’s proposals included establishing narrower ranges for each team’s combined salary and an expanded postseason playoffs from 10 teams to 14 of the league’s 30.

Unable to resolve the issues last December during negotiations, Major League Baseball owners voted unanimously for a lockout, the first work stoppage since the 1994-95 strike. Early in February, the owners requested the help of a federal mediator. And this isn’t the first time owners and players done so. In 1981, a mediator worked with partiers to resolve a 50-day strike. In the 1994 strike that eliminated the World Series, highly respected mediator Bill Usery was called in, but the mediation was unsuccessful.

This year the Players Association did not support the request for mediation, but instead, preferred to return to negotiations. Negotiations continued, but on March 4 the league officially cancelled all spring training games through March 17.

Mediations record with professional sports is clearly mixed. Mediation was not successful with disputes related to the 2011 NFL lockout and with the NHL that same year. On the other hand, the 2013 NHL mediation was successful with both owners and players publicly praising the mediator and the process.

The current status raises at least two points: Mediation can only happen if both parties believe a third party can help them work together to resolve the issues. It’s possible, for example, the players saw the offer for mediation as a negotiation tactic and not as a call find common ground. It’s also possible that players believe a resolution is not only possible, but close, and starting the mediation process would only delay the season even more.

A second point is that labor negotiations and mediations exclude other interested parties. It’s reasonable to ask if the public has a legitimate interest in seeing the season be played.

Disputes over the delivery of medical care creates stress for the patient and the doctor.

Patients and their families want to know “why” and “how” an event occurred. Patients and families want information. Many want to hear an apology or other acknowledgement of their loss.

Most physicians are given little or no training for handling disputes with patients. If anything, they have been advised that saying too much can lead to litigation. Many have been warned that an apology can be perceived as an acceptance of responsibility and liability. With that advice, most are reluctant to disclose any information as it might be used against them.

And litigation is often the outcome of medical disputes. Litigation creates additional stress for the patient, the family, and the medical professional. The dispute becomes adversarial with the parties taking positions and assembling evidence to support their grievances. While it is true that in most medical court cases, judges and juries decide in favor of the medical professional, the time invested in the dispute is months and most often years. Throughout, patients and their families continue to deal with the unresolved stress. And medical professionals also experience stress as well as lost time, costs and risk compromising their reputation.

When medical disputes were handled by mediation:
In the first, co-mediators were used—one mediator, an attorney who typically represented patients, and the other an attorney who typically represented doctors and hospitals in medical liability cases. If the first five years of the program 80% of the cases were resolved within three to four hours. While payouts were lower, patients were willing to accept the outcomes because of their timeliness.

A second program was set up to facilitate settlements that went beyond financial outcomes to allow the doctors, patients and their families to consider non-monetary solutions, such as apologies and revisions to practices that might avert future errors.

While mediation of medical disputes has the advantages of reduced costs, time and improved patient-physician relationships, there are barriers to wider use. Payments made on behalf of physicians as a result of mediation must be reported to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ National Practitioner Data Bank. This requirement, of course, negates the traditional confidentiality of mediation. As litigation favors the physician there is strong motivation to litigate.

Nonetheless, medical disputes are certainly an area where expanded use of mediation would benefit all parties.