Why Do Physicians Need An Agent?

So the first thing I think our audience wants to understand is this concept of MD envoy.

You've been a surgeon, an executive, you've chaired boards.

Why did you come up with this idea? What was the walk-up song for this?

You know, it's funny.

It actually extends back almost 20 years.

And so when I first finished my residency and fellowship training in orthopedic trauma, I was really getting into my first job And I recognized early on that even with the additional training as being an attorney and all those things, there were many things that I didn't quite understand about what I was getting into.

It was an academic position at the University of Florida.

I was very excited, you know, the idea of actually having independence and becoming a full-fledged physician outside of training.

And I basically took the contract that they gave me and I signed it.

And it wasn't necessarily that it was bad, but it was simply for the, I think the simple reason is that I was really excited about the opportunity.

And even if I had thought for a minute that I needed somebody or somebody to kind of review it and go through it with me to ensure that I was getting what I needed, I didn't really have the bandwidth as an individual to understand that.

And so that being said, you know, having some notoriety within the world of orthopedic trauma is one of a handful, if not the only orthopedic surgeon who happened to be an attorney.

Very quickly after I started my job, I began to get lots of calls from colleagues and people who are looking at their first positions and asking me if I could be some sort of authority for them to help them negotiate or find a better position or find the right things within their contracts that they might need.

With some experience and some practice, I was very free with my advice.

And I'd say, hey, this might be something you should consider.

Hey, this is something that I would imagine will help you in the long term.

And inevitably, they'd say, thank you.

And they'd go and they'd walk in and say, here are the things that I want.

And I'd talk to them a week later and they'd say, well, I went and asked for all those things, but they said no.

And ultimately they signed the contract and they said, okay, well, I guess that's my lot in life is to be the recipient rather than to be the one who's engaging.

So very quickly after those experiences, I began to think about, you know, what is happening in the world of physicians that we really don't have somebody who stands with us in those situations.

And I began to draw

the

analogies between physicians, medicine, and athletes and entertainers.

And you can't imagine that any high-powered athlete who spends their career going into something they've trained their life for walks into their first professional engagement and negotiates for themselves.