Why am I getting sketchy phone calls after my Nashville Car Accident?

If you’ve been in a Nashville car accident and less than 24 hours later you start getting phone calls from someone trying to send you to a doctor, hang up!  Everyday Nashville car accident victims are being lied to and funneled into bad medical treatment.  These marketing companies often work for an out-of-state chiropractor who solicits accident victims sometimes just hours after a motor vehicle accident.  

Of course if you have any questions, you can reach out to one of our experienced Nashville car accident lawyers here at Weir & Kestner.

Before we take a deep dive, let’s quickly get the legal stuff out of the way.  In Tennessee, health care providers are forbidden from soliciting accident victims unless they have a relationship with the victim or the solicitation is done more than 30 days after an accident (§ T.C.A 63-1-129).  Tennessee lawyers have a similar rule.  Tennessee’s Rules of Professional Conduct state “a lawyer shall not elicit employment from any person if a significant motive for the solicitation is the lawyer’s pecuniary gain and the communication concerns an action for personal injury . . . unless the accident . . . occurred more than thirty (30) days prior to the mailing or transmission of the communication or the lawyer has a family, close personal, or prior professional relationship with the person solicited (see the full rule).”  Now that we know how unethical and illegal it is that marketers call car accident victims so soon after a car accident, let’s talk about how these companies work.  

There are many ways car accident marketing companies try to get around the rules.  Here’s one scenario.  An out-of-state chiropractor, who isn’t a licensed chiropractor, gets their marketing company to solicit a Nashville car accident victim.  They claim they’re from the insurance company.  The injured person believes them and is sent to a clinic.  At the clinic, they’re seen by a nurse practitioner or a physician’s assistant, who then refers them to a chiropractor for treatment.  The chiropractors get paid by either billing the patient’s own auto insurance company under the Medical Payments portion of their policy, or by referring that patient to a lawyer the clinic works closely with to collect against the liability insurance carrier.    

Accident solicitation has been going on for a long time in Tennessee.  Here’s a news story from 2009 and a court case from 2011 if you’re interested in taking a deeper dive.  The bottom line is injury victims are the ones who get hurt from these illegal practices.  This network of unethical individuals only want money and don’t have the injured patient’s best interest in mind.  In fact, when an auto insurance company sees that a car accident victim has received treatment at a clinic they believe is committing fraud, they will use that victim’s case to gather evidence against the clinic rather than to adequately compensate the injury victim. 

Car accident solicitation has been a problem for many years.  Solicitation companies continue to find ways around the rules and now seem to obtain accident information even faster than before.  How do these companies get accident information so quickly when accident reports take days to be completed?  Is Davidson County allowing or selling early access to the accident information?  There are many unanswered questions about these business practices.  But, the bottom line is if you’re involved in a Nashville car wreck don’t fall for this telemarketing scam.  Make sure your treatment is strong and meets the legal standards necessary to win your Tennessee car accident case.