— Part 10
From Debate to Direction
How Healthcare Providers Can Lead the Future of Personal Injury Healthcare
By Michael Coates, Esq.
— Part 10
From Debate to Direction
How Healthcare Providers Can Lead the Future of Personal Injury Healthcare
By Michael Coates, Esq.
Watch Michael Coates Read This Article
The Great Betrayal
A bill few were meant to read is quietly rewriting who gets paid, who gets protected, and who gets left holding the bill. This is the record of what happened and who it touches next.
The Great Betrayal: Open Mic with Michael Coates
An open mic zoom group discussion on SB 623, the issues and concerns facing healthcare providers, and the potential path forward in California and nationally. Let’s discuss this together. Attendance will be limited so reserve your seat now.
The Great Betrayal
A bill few were meant to read is quietly rewriting who gets paid, who gets protected, and who gets left holding the bill. This is the record of what happened and who it touches next.
The Great Betrayal: Open Mic with Michael Coates
An open mic zoom group discussion on SB 623, the issues and concerns facing healthcare providers, and the potential path forward in California and nationally. Let’s discuss this together. Attendance will be limited so reserve your seat now.
THE GREAT BETRAYAL – PART 10:
From Debate to Direction
How Healthcare Providers Can Lead the Future of Personal Injury Healthcare
Over the course of this series, we have examined California’s SB 623 from many different perspectives.
We’ve explored how the legislation came to be.
We’ve discussed what changes.
We’ve considered how it may influence healthcare providers, attorneys, insurers, transportation companies, medical funding, and patient access to care.
We’ve also acknowledged that reasonable people can disagree about both the need for reform and the best way to accomplish it.
Now it is time to ask a different question: What should healthcare providers do next?
Get The Word Out To Peers and Organizations, and Demand Political Action
I do think there are many aspects of SB 623 that are valuable and will benefit society.
But I also think there are changes that need to be made so that the spirit and intent of the law is accomplished but re-thought and revisions made.
SB 623 does provide for the ability to make changes in its own wording:
(g)The Legislature declares that the provisions of this section are severable. If any provision of this section, or its application to any person or circumstance, is held invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect to the maximum extent permitted by law. It is the intent of the Legislature that each provision of this section would have been adopted independently of any other provision.
Consequently, the bill itself allows the removal of provisions without affecting the full force and effect of all other provisions. So that is one path.
However, when a legislative bill is signed into law, as was SB 623, it’s likely the new law of the land.
One path is for a curative bill. Come the fall legislative period, the same legislature that passed SB 623 could bring up for debate and pass a replacement bill.
And that approach can still cite SB 623(g) as support for that legislative action.
A bill that gives FAIR Health a voice. That gives Medicine a voice. That gives patients a voice.
That never happened and should.
In my opinion, there should be no “void and unenforceable” language and the limit on medical costs should be for trial evidence only, just as it already has been done in numerous states. That accomplishes what Uber wanted: limited nuclear and thermonuclear verdicts.
In my opinion, there should be removal of the limitation on the ability of medical financing and funding companies to profit, or proposed profit limits placed. Because removing medical funding means a loss of cash flow options to keep medical practice’s afloat, and critical medical care to patients — those consumers who should be the focus of all legislative analysis.
In my opinion, there should also be a re-shifting of the declaration requirement from the medical providers to those who sent the referrals: the attorneys and law firms. Only they know what they did and can properly and more easily track and account. Unless that burden shift is made, there is a huge cost and risk exposure on the medical profession that will present not only time, cost and resource issues that will increase the cost of care, but a legal exposure and questionable insurability for it on something they don’t control.
My opinion doesn’t matter, however. Yours does. And you must make that on your own.
Though I hope I’ve been a truth-telling guide.
Now that you have the immediate “call to action” covered, and what I think, and for you to decide on your own. I would like to expand your “action” thinking.
Your Call To Action May Have Financing To Back It Up
Remember in an earlier article in this series I brought up about getting an accounting for the use of funds from all the monies raised from the medical professionals to fight the Uber initiative?
Well, that initiative no longer exists.
Here’s a unique concept: ask the Medical PAC whether those millions can now be used to accomplish what I just laid out.
Are you willing to stand up and speak up? Has your money used for your profession directly?
You can now speak up and have millions potentially to back it up.
That choice is yours, your peers, your professional organizations, and the lobbyists who are paid to further your objectives.
Action is More than a Political Reaction
Okay, I now said my “soapbox” call to action but let me get now to a different one.
Not politically. Professionally. Operationally. Strategically.
Because regardless of whether additional legislation is enacted, or whether portions of SB 623 are interpreted differently by future courts, the direction of healthcare is becoming increasingly clear.
Transparency is increasing. Documentation expectations are increasing.
Compliance requirements are increasing. Interdisciplinary collaboration is increasing.
Patients expect more. Regulators expect more. Courts expect more.
Healthcare is changing.
The providers who thrive will be those who prepare for that future rather than resist it.
The Future Belongs to Ethical Providers & All In the Personal Injury Ecosystem
If there is one message I hope providers take away from this series, it is this: Ethics is no longer simply the right thing to do. Ethical care, ethical billing, ethical action is becoming a competitive advantage.
Practices that consistently provide only medically necessary care, maintain excellent documentation, communicate clearly, and place patient welfare first will be better positioned regardless of how laws evolve.
No different for attorneys who should let their clients know up front results aren’t guaranteed and ignore the puffery on law firm advertisements. Stop charging phantom costs like “admin fees” and “file set up fees” when on contingency and stop sucking up most of the settlement proceeds in your attorney fees, especially when it’s the law firm who often decides to not invest more money to take a case to trial. Stop placing the burdens of your business decisions on the back of medical providers and physicians.
Same with insurers. When you have liability issues solved and it’s a matter of “fair compensation”, recognize it, pay it, and do it early not after protracted delays and scorched earth litigation tactics. Stop using your deep pockets to scare others to succumb to your demands or threats.
And the same for transportation companies like Uber. Take personal accountability and reform for public safety without needing others to force it. Stop punishing the good and ethical law firms and medical providers and focus on the unethical ones. Stop trying to work the system and instead collaborate to help everyone and especially consumers, not harm them or the ability to access good care by competent, ethical medical professionals. And stop allowing a Legal Lobby to shift burdens that they should have if you really need something imposed.
Transparency and ethical conduct should not be feared. They should be embraced.
Those who have nothing to hide have every reason to demonstrate the value of the role they play in the personal injury ecosystem.
Documentation Is No Longer Just a Medical Record
Documentation has always supported patient care.
Today it serves many additional purposes.
It explains medical necessity. It supports communication among providers. It informs attorneys. It educates insurers. It assists courts. It protects practices.
The strongest documentation does more than record treatment.
It tells the patient’s healthcare story. I’ve termed it storytelling documentation.
Not through exaggeration. Not through advocacy. But through accurate, objective, clinically meaningful records that tell a patient’s healthcare story and recovery journey by connecting diagnosis, mechanism of injury, treatment plan, medical necessity, actual treatment, evaluations, recovery, and billing.
That is where healthcare providers create value, not only for themselves, but for every stakeholder involved in the patient’s care and the personal injury ecosystem.
Think Beyond the Injury
One of the most important lessons personal injury healthcare has taught me is that trauma rarely affects only one body part.
Pain affects concentration. Difficulty concentrating affects work performance. Loss of work affects financial stability. Financial stress affects mental health. Mental health affects recovery. Recovery affects families. It’s all related. It’s all tied together.
The biopsychosocial approach to trauma-based care reminds us that patients do not experience injuries in isolated anatomical compartments. It’s a whole body, whole life impact. As human beings.
The providers who understand that reality will deliver better care, produce better documentation, make more appropriate referrals, and ultimately improve both healthcare outcomes and legal outcomes.
The attorneys, insurers, and transportation companies who do the same will help solve the problems they all seek currently through tort reform and lawsuits. Because tort reform is a poor bandaid that often falls off, often fails to work as intended, and will never solve the larger goals.
Collaboration Is the Future
Healthcare is becoming increasingly team oriented.
Emergency physicians. Primary care physicians. Chiropractors. Acupuncturists. Physical therapists. Pain physicians. Orthopedic surgeons. Neurosurgeons. Psychologists. Neuropsychologists. Occupational therapists. Case managers. Attorneys.
Each sees only part of the patient’s journey. No one sees everything.
The future belongs to providers and physicians who communicate effectively across disciplines and recognize that excellent patient care is rarely delivered in isolation.
Collaboration is the answer to attorneys, insurers, and transportation companies who do the same.
Build Systems, Not Reactions
Every practice should use this moment to evaluate its internal systems.
Ask:
Do we consistently document referral sources?
Are our coding and billing practices current?
Do our lien agreements accurately reflect current law and position and protect us best?
Have we reviewed our financial risk and malpractice coverage policies?
Do staff understand documentation expectations?
Do we perform periodic compliance reviews?
Do we provide reasonable fees and reasonable billing that is supportable and justifiable?
Do we have protocols for responding to legal requests?
Practices with strong systems adapt far more easily than practices built upon individual memory or habit.
Invest in Education, Training and Expert Help
Healthcare is evolving too quickly for providers to rely solely on what they learned years ago.
Clinical education remains essential.
But so does education in: Documentation. Compliance. Risk management. Healthcare law. Communication. Trauma-informed care. The biopsychosocial model.
Professional growth today requires both clinical excellence and operational excellence.
It also requires growth in business areas such as negotiations and understanding net profit rather than gross revenues and balancing immediate financial returns with long-term relationship and collaboration desires.
Attend conferences. Join and contribute to your professional associations and organizations who seek to advocate for you.
Get not only yourself trained, but your staff. The more time you focus on treating patients, the better for them, your team, your family and you.
And seek out the expert help you need to get to next levels. Whether coaching, outsourcing, staff expansion, alliance building. Whatever it is, find it, vet it, and get it.
Diversify Relationships
Healthy practices avoid becoming overly dependent upon any single referral source.
Strong relationships should be built across the healthcare community.
Emergency departments. Primary care. Specialists. Therapists. Attorneys. Employers.
Not just peers and law firms, but those that know your medical magic best: your patients.
When referral relationships are broad, ethical, and based upon quality patient care, practices become more resilient regardless of legislative change.
Stop relying upon law firms to grow a personal injury segment. You don’t need law firms to do it.
Stay Engaged
One lesson from SB 623 is that healthcare providers cannot afford to become involved in public policy only after legislation has passed.
You do not need to become a lobbyist. But you need to remain informed.
Read proposed legislation. Participate in professional associations. Attend educational programs. Share practical experience with policymakers when opportunities arise.
Make sure to register for my company’s newsletter so that as I bring medi-legal issues to the open, you get it early. Early awareness allows you to earlier take advantage of opportunities, or to correct problems before they become full scale fires.
Healthcare providers possess perspectives that few others can offer.
Those perspectives matter. You matter.
Measure Success Differently
For years, many discussions surrounding personal injury have focused primarily on dollars: Settlement values. Collections. Reductions. Reimbursement.
Those issues will always matter.
But perhaps it is time to measure success differently.
Did the patient receive timely care?
Was all the care received medically necessary supported by clear, detailed documentation?
Were appropriate specialists involved?
Was the diagnosis complete?
Did communication improve?
Was recovery optimized?
Were psychological and life-impact barriers recognized and addressed or referred out?
Did the patient regain function?
Did the healthcare team work collaboratively?
Financial outcomes matter. But they should never become the sole measure of success.
The Future of Personal Injury Healthcare
I believe personal injury healthcare is entering a new era.
An era that demands greater professionalism. Greater ethics. Greater transparency. Greater collaboration. Greater accountability. Greater respect among every stakeholder.
Patients deserve healthcare providers who understand trauma beyond imaging studies.
Providers deserve fair opportunities to deliver excellent care.
Attorneys deserve reliable medical evidence and to be adequately paid but not overpaid.
Insurers deserve accurate documentation.
Transportation companies deserve fair compensation awards against them.
Society deserves confidence that the personal injury system functions ethically and effectively.
Those objectives are not mutually exclusive. They reinforce one another.
My Final Thought
The title of this series is The Great Betrayal.
Some readers may have expected it to end with anger. Or frustration. Or blame.
Instead, I hope it ends with something more valuable. Responsibility.
Because healthcare providers possess enormous influence over the future of personal injury medicine.
In fact, the importance of healthcare providers in personal injury itself is greater than you realize. Consumers always need proper treatment, good documentation, and reasonable billing to support every PI case. They don’t always need a law firm.
We can choose to become more transparent. We can improve documentation. We can strengthen interdisciplinary communication. We can embrace evidence-based, trauma-informed, biopsychosocial care. We can reject unethical conduct while elevating ethical practice. And we can advocate not only for our professions, but for our patients.
That is leadership. And leadership is exactly what this moment requires.
A Final Challenge
If SB 623 teaches us anything, it is that healthcare providers cannot simply react to change.
We must help shape it.
Not through confrontation. But through education.
Not through division. But through collaboration.
Not by protecting outdated systems. But by building better ones.
Because the measure of any healthcare system is not how well it serves one stakeholder.
It is how well it serves them all.
Better Patient Outcomes. Better Provider Outcomes. Better Case Outcomes. Better Claim Outcomes.
That is the future worth building. And it is a future that begins with each of us.
Epilogue
Whether you ultimately support SB 623, oppose it, or remain somewhere in the middle, I hope this series has accomplished one goal:
To encourage thoughtful discussion.
Healthcare providers deserve to understand the laws affecting their practices.
Patients deserve a healthcare system that remains accessible, ethical, transparent, and focused on recovery.
And every stakeholder—providers, attorneys, insurers, transportation companies, legislators, courts, and patients—shares responsibility for creating a personal injury ecosystem that earns public trust.
The conversation should not end here.
In many ways… It is only beginning.
THE GREAT BETRAYAL – PART 10:
From Debate to Direction
How Healthcare Providers Can Lead the Future of Personal Injury Healthcare
Over the course of this series, we have examined California’s SB 623 from many different perspectives.
We’ve explored how the legislation came to be.
We’ve discussed what changes.
We’ve considered how it may influence healthcare providers, attorneys, insurers, transportation companies, medical funding, and patient access to care.
We’ve also acknowledged that reasonable people can disagree about both the need for reform and the best way to accomplish it.
Now it is time to ask a different question: What should healthcare providers do next?
Get The Word Out To Peers and Organizations, and Demand Political Action
I do think there are many aspects of SB 623 that are valuable and will benefit society.
But I also think there are changes that need to be made so that the spirit and intent of the law is accomplished but re-thought and revisions made.
SB 623 does provide for the ability to make changes in its own wording:
(g)The Legislature declares that the provisions of this section are severable. If any provision of this section, or its application to any person or circumstance, is held invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect to the maximum extent permitted by law. It is the intent of the Legislature that each provision of this section would have been adopted independently of any other provision.
Consequently, the bill itself allows the removal of provisions without affecting the full force and effect of all other provisions. So that is one path.
However, when a legislative bill is signed into law, as was SB 623, it’s likely the new law of the land.
One path is for a curative bill. Come the fall legislative period, the same legislature that passed SB 623 could bring up for debate and pass a replacement bill.
And that approach can still cite SB 623(g) as support for that legislative action.
A bill that gives FAIR Health a voice. That gives Medicine a voice. That gives patients a voice.
That never happened and should.
In my opinion, there should be no “void and unenforceable” language and the limit on medical costs should be for trial evidence only, just as it already has been done in numerous states. That accomplishes what Uber wanted: limited nuclear and thermonuclear verdicts.
In my opinion, there should be removal of the limitation on the ability of medical financing and funding companies to profit, or proposed profit limits placed. Because removing medical funding means a loss of cash flow options to keep medical practice’s afloat, and critical medical care to patients — those consumers who should be the focus of all legislative analysis.
In my opinion, there should also be a re-shifting of the declaration requirement from the medical providers to those who sent the referrals: the attorneys and law firms. Only they know what they did and can properly and more easily track and account. Unless that burden shift is made, there is a huge cost and risk exposure on the medical profession that will present not only time, cost and resource issues that will increase the cost of care, but a legal exposure and questionable insurability for it on something they don’t control.
My opinion doesn’t matter, however. Yours does. And you must make that on your own.
Though I hope I’ve been a truth-telling guide.
Now that you have the immediate “call to action” covered, and what I think, and for you to decide on your own. I would like to expand your “action” thinking.
Your Call To Action May Have Financing To Back It Up
Remember in an earlier article in this series I brought up about getting an accounting for the use of funds from all the monies raised from the medical professionals to fight the Uber initiative?
Well, that initiative no longer exists.
Here’s a unique concept: ask the Medical PAC whether those millions can now be used to accomplish what I just laid out.
Are you willing to stand up and speak up? Has your money used for your profession directly?
You can now speak up and have millions potentially to back it up.
That choice is yours, your peers, your professional organizations, and the lobbyists who are paid to further your objectives.
Action is More than a Political Reaction
Okay, I now said my “soapbox” call to action but let me get now to a different one.
Not politically. Professionally. Operationally. Strategically.
Because regardless of whether additional legislation is enacted, or whether portions of SB 623 are interpreted differently by future courts, the direction of healthcare is becoming increasingly clear.
Transparency is increasing. Documentation expectations are increasing.
Compliance requirements are increasing. Interdisciplinary collaboration is increasing.
Patients expect more. Regulators expect more. Courts expect more.
Healthcare is changing.
The providers who thrive will be those who prepare for that future rather than resist it.
The Future Belongs to Ethical Providers & All In the Personal Injury Ecosystem
If there is one message I hope providers take away from this series, it is this: Ethics is no longer simply the right thing to do. Ethical care, ethical billing, ethical action is becoming a competitive advantage.
Practices that consistently provide only medically necessary care, maintain excellent documentation, communicate clearly, and place patient welfare first will be better positioned regardless of how laws evolve.
No different for attorneys who should let their clients know up front results aren’t guaranteed and ignore the puffery on law firm advertisements. Stop charging phantom costs like “admin fees” and “file set up fees” when on contingency and stop sucking up most of the settlement proceeds in your attorney fees, especially when it’s the law firm who often decides to not invest more money to take a case to trial. Stop placing the burdens of your business decisions on the back of medical providers and physicians.
Same with insurers. When you have liability issues solved and it’s a matter of “fair compensation”, recognize it, pay it, and do it early not after protracted delays and scorched earth litigation tactics. Stop using your deep pockets to scare others to succumb to your demands or threats.
And the same for transportation companies like Uber. Take personal accountability and reform for public safety without needing others to force it. Stop punishing the good and ethical law firms and medical providers and focus on the unethical ones. Stop trying to work the system and instead collaborate to help everyone and especially consumers, not harm them or the ability to access good care by competent, ethical medical professionals. And stop allowing a Legal Lobby to shift burdens that they should have if you really need something imposed.
Transparency and ethical conduct should not be feared. They should be embraced.
Those who have nothing to hide have every reason to demonstrate the value of the role they play in the personal injury ecosystem.
Documentation Is No Longer Just a Medical Record
Documentation has always supported patient care.
Today it serves many additional purposes.
It explains medical necessity. It supports communication among providers. It informs attorneys. It educates insurers. It assists courts. It protects practices.
The strongest documentation does more than record treatment.
It tells the patient’s healthcare story. I’ve termed it storytelling documentation.
Not through exaggeration. Not through advocacy. But through accurate, objective, clinically meaningful records that tell a patient’s healthcare story and recovery journey by connecting diagnosis, mechanism of injury, treatment plan, medical necessity, actual treatment, evaluations, recovery, and billing.
That is where healthcare providers create value, not only for themselves, but for every stakeholder involved in the patient’s care and the personal injury ecosystem.
Think Beyond the Injury
One of the most important lessons personal injury healthcare has taught me is that trauma rarely affects only one body part.
Pain affects concentration. Difficulty concentrating affects work performance. Loss of work affects financial stability. Financial stress affects mental health. Mental health affects recovery. Recovery affects families. It’s all related. It’s all tied together.
The biopsychosocial approach to trauma-based care reminds us that patients do not experience injuries in isolated anatomical compartments. It’s a whole body, whole life impact. As human beings.
The providers who understand that reality will deliver better care, produce better documentation, make more appropriate referrals, and ultimately improve both healthcare outcomes and legal outcomes.
The attorneys, insurers, and transportation companies who do the same will help solve the problems they all seek currently through tort reform and lawsuits. Because tort reform is a poor bandaid that often falls off, often fails to work as intended, and will never solve the larger goals.
Collaboration Is the Future
Healthcare is becoming increasingly team oriented.
Emergency physicians. Primary care physicians. Chiropractors. Acupuncturists. Physical therapists. Pain physicians. Orthopedic surgeons. Neurosurgeons. Psychologists. Neuropsychologists. Occupational therapists. Case managers. Attorneys.
Each sees only part of the patient’s journey. No one sees everything.
The future belongs to providers and physicians who communicate effectively across disciplines and recognize that excellent patient care is rarely delivered in isolation.
Collaboration is the answer to attorneys, insurers, and transportation companies who do the same.
Build Systems, Not Reactions
Every practice should use this moment to evaluate its internal systems.
Ask:
Do we consistently document referral sources?
Are our coding and billing practices current?
Do our lien agreements accurately reflect current law and position and protect us best?
Have we reviewed our financial risk and malpractice coverage policies?
Do staff understand documentation expectations?
Do we perform periodic compliance reviews?
Do we provide reasonable fees and reasonable billing that is supportable and justifiable?
Do we have protocols for responding to legal requests?
Practices with strong systems adapt far more easily than practices built upon individual memory or habit.
Invest in Education, Training and Expert Help
Healthcare is evolving too quickly for providers to rely solely on what they learned years ago.
Clinical education remains essential.
But so does education in: Documentation. Compliance. Risk management. Healthcare law. Communication. Trauma-informed care. The biopsychosocial model.
Professional growth today requires both clinical excellence and operational excellence.
It also requires growth in business areas such as negotiations and understanding net profit rather than gross revenues and balancing immediate financial returns with long-term relationship and collaboration desires.
Attend conferences. Join and contribute to your professional associations and organizations who seek to advocate for you.
Get not only yourself trained, but your staff. The more time you focus on treating patients, the better for them, your team, your family and you.
And seek out the expert help you need to get to next levels. Whether coaching, outsourcing, staff expansion, alliance building. Whatever it is, find it, vet it, and get it.
Diversify Relationships
Healthy practices avoid becoming overly dependent upon any single referral source.
Strong relationships should be built across the healthcare community.
Emergency departments. Primary care. Specialists. Therapists. Attorneys. Employers.
Not just peers and law firms, but those that know your medical magic best: your patients.
When referral relationships are broad, ethical, and based upon quality patient care, practices become more resilient regardless of legislative change.
Stop relying upon law firms to grow a personal injury segment. You don’t need law firms to do it.
Stay Engaged
One lesson from SB 623 is that healthcare providers cannot afford to become involved in public policy only after legislation has passed.
You do not need to become a lobbyist. But you need to remain informed.
Read proposed legislation. Participate in professional associations. Attend educational programs. Share practical experience with policymakers when opportunities arise.
Make sure to register for my company’s newsletter so that as I bring medi-legal issues to the open, you get it early. Early awareness allows you to earlier take advantage of opportunities, or to correct problems before they become full scale fires.
Healthcare providers possess perspectives that few others can offer.
Those perspectives matter. You matter.
Measure Success Differently
For years, many discussions surrounding personal injury have focused primarily on dollars: Settlement values. Collections. Reductions. Reimbursement.
Those issues will always matter.
But perhaps it is time to measure success differently.
Did the patient receive timely care?
Was all the care received medically necessary supported by clear, detailed documentation?
Were appropriate specialists involved?
Was the diagnosis complete?
Did communication improve?
Was recovery optimized?
Were psychological and life-impact barriers recognized and addressed or referred out?
Did the patient regain function?
Did the healthcare team work collaboratively?
Financial outcomes matter. But they should never become the sole measure of success.
The Future of Personal Injury Healthcare
I believe personal injury healthcare is entering a new era.
An era that demands greater professionalism. Greater ethics. Greater transparency. Greater collaboration. Greater accountability. Greater respect among every stakeholder.
Patients deserve healthcare providers who understand trauma beyond imaging studies.
Providers deserve fair opportunities to deliver excellent care.
Attorneys deserve reliable medical evidence and to be adequately paid but not overpaid.
Insurers deserve accurate documentation.
Transportation companies deserve fair compensation awards against them.
Society deserves confidence that the personal injury system functions ethically and effectively.
Those objectives are not mutually exclusive. They reinforce one another.
My Final Thought
The title of this series is The Great Betrayal.
Some readers may have expected it to end with anger. Or frustration. Or blame.
Instead, I hope it ends with something more valuable. Responsibility.
Because healthcare providers possess enormous influence over the future of personal injury medicine.
In fact, the importance of healthcare providers in personal injury itself is greater than you realize. Consumers always need proper treatment, good documentation, and reasonable billing to support every PI case. They don’t always need a law firm.
We can choose to become more transparent. We can improve documentation. We can strengthen interdisciplinary communication. We can embrace evidence-based, trauma-informed, biopsychosocial care. We can reject unethical conduct while elevating ethical practice. And we can advocate not only for our professions, but for our patients.
That is leadership. And leadership is exactly what this moment requires.
A Final Challenge
If SB 623 teaches us anything, it is that healthcare providers cannot simply react to change.
We must help shape it.
Not through confrontation. But through education.
Not through division. But through collaboration.
Not by protecting outdated systems. But by building better ones.
Because the measure of any healthcare system is not how well it serves one stakeholder.
It is how well it serves them all.
Better Patient Outcomes. Better Provider Outcomes. Better Case Outcomes. Better Claim Outcomes.
That is the future worth building. And it is a future that begins with each of us.
Epilogue
Whether you ultimately support SB 623, oppose it, or remain somewhere in the middle, I hope this series has accomplished one goal:
To encourage thoughtful discussion.
Healthcare providers deserve to understand the laws affecting their practices.
Patients deserve a healthcare system that remains accessible, ethical, transparent, and focused on recovery.
And every stakeholder—providers, attorneys, insurers, transportation companies, legislators, courts, and patients—shares responsibility for creating a personal injury ecosystem that earns public trust.
The conversation should not end here.
In many ways… It is only beginning.
The Great Betrayal
A bill few were meant to read is quietly rewriting who gets paid, who gets protected, and who gets left holding the bill. This is the record of what happened and who it touches next.
The Great Betrayal: Open Mic with Michael Coates
An open mic zoom group discussion on SB 623, the issues and concerns facing healthcare providers, and the potential path forward in California and nationally. Let’s discuss this together. Attendance will be limited so reserve your seat now.
The Great Betrayal
A bill few were meant to read is quietly rewriting who gets paid, who gets protected, and who gets left holding the bill. This is the record of what happened and who it touches next.
The Great Betrayal: Open Mic with Michael Coates
An open mic zoom group discussion on SB 623, the issues and concerns facing healthcare providers, and the potential path forward in California and nationally. Let’s discuss this together. Attendance will be limited so reserve your seat now.
The next chapter names more players and more states. Get every part the moment it publishes, and let your professional organizations, state associations, and legislators hear your voice.
The next chapter names more players and more states. Get every part the moment it publishes, and let your professional organizations, state associations, and legislators hear your voice.
— WHAT COMES NEXT
Knowing what changed is only the beginning
The Great Betrayal lays out the story, the law, and the risk. What you do with that information next could shape how your practice protects care and payment.
PI Billing Pros
When difficult law firms push back, hand off those law firms and let the experts handle your negotiations.
Business Advantage Coaching
Build a stronger personal injury practice before difficult law firms and lowball offers put your practice at risk.
— WHAT COMES NEXT
Knowing what changed is only the beginning
The Great Betrayal lays out the story, the law, and the risk. What you do with that information next could shape how your practice protects care and payment.
PI Billing Pros
When difficult law firms push back, hand off those law firms and let the experts handle your negotiations.
Business Advantage Coaching
Build a stronger personal injury practice before difficult law firms and lowball offers put your practice at risk.
— An Investigative Series · California SB 623
Discover how SB 623 could impact healthcare providers through our 10-part investigative series, The Great Betrayal.
Secure your seat today. Choose the discussion topic that interests you and join our Open Mic Zoom conversation on the issues impacting healthcare providers. Attendance is limited.
We’ll only use this to confirm your reservation and send event updates.
