Christopher Stephen Nelson

This is a long over due review for my lawyer, Mr. Nelson, who has represented me in every single contract negotiation and review for quite some time. I am a surgeon in active private medical practice for the last several years. I started my own practice right after leaving academic medicine. Like oth...er doctors, I would hire a random lawyer for contract review but realize after a year or so that I could have gotten a lot more from the hospital. As a physician, I am constantly renegotiating my contracts with hospitals, health insurance companies, or other physician groups. Whether it's for increasing my surgical on-call fees, increasing my reimbursements from the private third party payers, or renegotiating the terms of my hospital contract to my favor, Mr. Nelson managed to achieve not just a nice improvement but a DRASTIC increase in my income. In terms of surgical on-call service, payment was increased by 30% per day. As for private health insurers, my average multiple over Medicare was renegotiated to almost double over their stated multiple over Medicare reimbursements. At one point, I just felt bad for the people at the other side of the table, but then I realized that they are using lawyers too and given the amount of time and effort I have placed into my patients and surgical practice, I DESERVE to be as aggressive as possible with increasing my revenue. It's just part of the medical business. I use the term "DRASTIC" because prior to Mr. Nelson, I either negotiated myself (which I had no time to prepare for) or hired a mediocre lawyer, which usually resulted in little to no increase in contract rates or sometimes less revenue (I had to work more for the same amount of income which I know many physicians are all too familiar with). I have hired many lawyers before to help with the contract side of the medical business. All too often, my representative would tell me to just settle for the proposed rates by the hospital or insurance companies. For those that have been in private practice for years, I'm sure you are familiar with that tone. Luckily for me, Mr. Nelson had a different change of tone, so much so, I felt that we were asking for too much. But guess what, I absolutely underestimated how much money hospitals or insurance companies have allocated for my services! My only regret....not hiring Mr. Nelson earlier. I have never hired a high end lawyer before Mr. Nelson. But let me tell you, physician to physician, hiring a high end lawyer to review your newly proposed contract or to represent you in contract negotiations is worth every dollar and having Mr. Nelson represent me was probably of on the best decisions in my career. This is a definite MUST for new residency graduates who are new to the healthcare environment. I highly advise against thinking that money is not important or negotiating may give you a bad image. Although hospitals may tell you that money is limited secondary to the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare"), they have allocated a significant amount of money for your services and will try to get your services at the cheapest rate possible (remember, their savings end up as bonuses for their CEOs). They also expect you to NEGOTIATE. As a physician, you are most likely careful and methodical with treating your patients and would never treat someone outside your scope of practice. Your contracts should be treated the SAME way. I consulted Mr. Nelson a long time ago, and it paid off in dividends.