Dr. Tom Grant, Med-Legal Consultant, Chiropractor and personal injury entrepreneur, of Pragma Intel recently hosted a Q&A session with the founder and CEO of Cherokee Funding, Reid Zeising, to discuss medical funding versus medical liens.
Below is an excerpt from their conversation:
Dr. Tom Grant: How would you describe the differences between medical funding and medical liens?
Reid Zeising:
They’re all liens. Whether it’s a doctor, a hospital or a medical funding company holding the lien they’re all liens.
In the medical funding world, non-recourse funding is a state-by-state issue, so some states require recourse and some do not. Our position, though, is that we don’t want medical providers being the financiers of their own services and holding liens against their patients.
Dr. Tom Grant: In your opinion, what are the pitfalls of doctors holding liens?
Reid Zeising:
I’m biased. We’re in the business of medical funding. But regardless of each professional and each individual’s role, the goal is to get the patient back on their feet. The customer in these instances are catastrophically injured people, who are most likely uninsured or underinsured, and who have a liability carrier claim.
To me, there are tremendous issues when the doctors are the lien holders. It is an inherent conflict of interest, not to mention the fact that it arms the defense counsel with material to change the focus away from the fault of their client. In catastrophic cases, where defense attorneys are trying to change the case into anything else other than what it is, my thought is why arm them? Can the defense council point out that the medical practitioners have a vested financial interest in the case? Can they turn the focus into a sideshow by pointing out that the doctors are financiers instead of practitioners, and affect the jury’s opinion? We’ve seen this occur many times to the detriment of plaintiffs. And in my opinion, there’s no reason to give them that piece of low hanging fruit.
Dr. Tom Grant: What goes into medical funding, and why is it your recommendation that doctors do not get involved?
Reid Zeising:
Doctors are in the business of providing medical treatment; they should not be in the business of providing medical funding. It requires underwriting, risk management, case follow-ups, and accounting for a variety of outcomes that can occur. Ultimately, it ends up being a lot of analysis and collections, and doctors do just as well, if not better, by not getting involved.
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