Challenges you may face as a physician are wide-ranging. Some of the most common ones we see include:
- You have received a notice of intent to sue.
- You have been threatened by a patient or a lawyer with a medical board complaint or other action.
- You need help dismissing a problem patient.
- You are doing battle against an unethical expert witness at trial.
Any of these situations could derail your career if not handled properly, but where do you begin?
As a Medical Justice member, you will have our proprietary templates for deterring legal issues, as well as direct access to our medico-legal experts via our hotline for tailored advice about next steps. All of the above are problems that our team has come across many times, and has successfully helped doctors navigate; just check out our case study library.
What is included in the protection plans?
When you join Medical Justice, your membership provides you access to speak directly with Jeff Segal, MD, JD—an established expert working at the intersection of the medical and legal fields. Dr. Segal, along with our team, is here to provide analysis when you have challenges related to your practice based on our medical and legal experience.
We also provide our members with resources and other benefits:
Benefits of Membership
- Deterrence against frivolous lawsuits: Reduce the risk of being named in a frivolous suit using our templates, documents, and recommended processes. Depending on your specialty and geographic location, our members enjoy a significantly lower suit rate than the general population (0.5-2%/year versus 8-10%/year).
- Early action against frivolous lawsuits: The objective of the Early Action Program is to assist in getting cases dropped sooner rather than later when you receive a request for records, notice of intent to sue, or summons. Since our advent, we have supported thousands of cases with our Early Action Program. Medical Justice follows procedures to avoid compromising a case while the case is pending. Defense counsel approves timing and use of the Program to gain the best impact for the defense.
- Counterclaims support against frivolous lawsuits: Medical Justice holds proponents of frivolous lawsuits accountable. We allocate up to $100k to file countersuits and counterclaims when terminated in favor of our member based on the merits of the case.
- Medical Justice PEER Program: Members are provided with volunteer defense experts to help defendants in the eyes of a jury. We are also available for chart reviews.
- DISAPPEAR program: This service offers customized templates for addressing unjustified demands for refunds and credit card charge-backs from patients. The goal is to resolve issues without escalating the demand into a courtroom—or online.
- Medico-legal hotline: Unlike traditional attorneys who charge hourly, we work on an “hourless” rate. And we’re the first call our members make when there’s a whiff of medico-legal headache. Our team consists of seasoned lawyers and combined MDs/JDs that know how to get you back focusing on your practice. We also specialize in online reputation management—we are experts on medical and legal aspects ranging from those that arise in your physical practice, all the way to the online space.
- Online reputation marketing: Our eMerit program for online reputation management can help you promote your practice’s brand, and dilute the occasional negative review, through a simple collection & posting process designed to deputize your many happy patients’ voices and shore up your online reputation.
- Protection against internet defamation: Internet defamation has been, and still is, an emerging threat. Attacks on a doctor’s reputation may come from both disgruntled patients and those posing as patients. We continuously scan multiple rating sites for each practice member and corporate entity in our program, alerting you of new internet postings. We send you a report of all activity, alerting you to take action (such as responding in a HIPAA-compliant manner).
- Accretion of retroactive coverage over time: Your past coverage is accrued while you maintain your Membership. We have been helping to protect our doctors for 20+ years.
- Exclusive medico-legal resources in our members-only website: Each member has a personal login to their member-only page on our website, with access to proprietary documents, training videos, a “sentiment overview” summarizing your online reviews, tools for online reputation management, and other helpful documents to benefit your practice.
- Patient conflict resolution: Medical Justice assists members with customized templates addressing unjustified demands for refunds, credit card charge-backs, and other seeds for friction. These templates can help prevent an unwarranted demand escalating into a lawsuit, board complaint, or internet headache. Medical Justice also helps doctors terminate the doctor-patient relationship and dismiss difficult patients from a practice completely and compliantly, when appropriate, with patient dismissal templates.
Three Protection Plan Tiers
All of our Prospective Plans include the above benefits, as well as others that you can choose from depending on your practice’s needs:
Prospective Core
All services listed above
Weekly monitoring of online reviews, with automated alerts
Member portal for monitoring reviews & requesting help
Access to our proprietary review collection system for 40 reviews from your existing patients
Strategic, HIPAA-compliant assistance with 3 negative reviews annually
Prospective Premier
All services listed above
Daily monitoring of online reviews, with automated alerts
Member portal for monitoring reviews & requesting help
Access to our proprietary review collection system for 90 reviews from your existing patients
Strategic, HIPAA-compliant assistance with 10 negative reviews annually
Opportunity to purchase additional negative review assistance with an add-on package or by upgrading to eMerit at any time
eMerit Online Reputation Management
eMerit membership offers the most robust suite of benefits—the protection benefits listed above, paired with our complete web anti-defamation program to enhance your practice’s brand:
All services listed above
Daily review monitoring with personalized recommendations
Member portal with dashboard for progress reports and patient satisfaction feedback reports
Dedicated account manager
Collection and posting of unlimited reviews
Unlimited negative review assistance from strategic, HIPAA-compliant concierge
Profile management to optimize local SEO for branded search results
Our proprietary eMerit system streamlines patient feedback and boosts visibility by securely sharing patients’ authentic experiences online with their consent. This feedback is crucial for improving your branded search results and attracting potential new patients.
eMerit integrates smoothly into your patient care protocols and helps future-proof your practice. Together with our unique Medical Justice plan member benefits, eMerit forms the foundation for a well-protected and highly visible medical practice.
Add-On Services
We customize your protection plan to suit your needs. These add-on services are available to help with prior, existing, or future lawsuits, as well as to help guide your practice’s HIPAA compliance.
Retroactive Benefits
Our retroactive protection add-on addresses medical events in the past that have not yet become the basis of an open medical malpractice suit.
PE Lite
PE Lite is our early action Protection add-on for pre-existing cases when joining. This facilitates a physician being dropped from a frivolous lawsuit. This is a program specific for named, open malpractice cases at the time of the purchase.
PE Shield
This counterclaims benefit add-on provides a recourse for physicians against any or all proponents of a frivolous lawsuit when a case is dismissed based on the merits of the case in favor of the member.
HIPAA & HITECH
This cost-effective solution is designed to simplify coding, billing, and HIPAA compliance, help physicians avoid fines, and keep practices out of the headlines.
Chief Executive Officer & Founder
Jeffrey Segal, MD, JD is a board-certified neurosurgeon and lawyer. In the process of conceiving, funding, developing, and growing Medical Justice, Dr. Segal has established himself as one of the country’s leading authorities on medical malpractice issues, counterclaims, and internet-based assaults on reputation.
What are the risks without threat protection?
One bad experience could cost you—a lot. We’ve seen physicians who have experienced the gamut of negative consequences, including:
- Lost patient revenue
- Licensing board review
- Named in the National Practitioner Data Bank
- Medical malpractice lawsuits
- Financial stress
“What Medical Justice did for me was something my med-mal carrier could not do: it made me no longer fear my patients.”
—J. Crutchfield, MD, FACS
FAQs
You have real concerns and pressing problems, so we respond quickly with genuine solutions. Learn how we’ve helped our many loyal clients in our case study library.