The “Quarterback” of Recovery: Why Your Family Doctor is the Key to Your Personal Injury Case

The “Quarterback” of Recovery: Why Your Family Doctor is the Key to Your Personal Injury Case

When you’re involved in a car accident or a workplace injury, the legal hurdles are only half the battle. The real challenge is often found in the doctor’s office. On the latest episode of the Flager Law Personal Injury Hour, host Adam Flager sits down with Dr. Christopher Belletieri, D.O. of Dedicated Doctors to discuss the vital synergy between legal advocacy and medical care.

Many accident victims are shocked to find that their long-term family physicians often refuse to treat “third-party” cases due to complex billing and the looming requirement of legal testimony. Dr. Belletieri explains why his practice, Dedicated Doctors, takes a different approach. By acting as a “medical quarterback,” he ensures that patients receive not only the treatment they need but also the expert medical-legal documentation required to secure their future.

Key Takeaways from the Episode:

• The “Panel Doctor” Trap: Why injured workers often feel neglected by insurance-assigned physicians and how to rebuild trust with a private advocate.

• The Emotional Toll: Addressing the 90% of injured workers who face anxiety and depression when they are sidelined from providing for their families.

• Medical Causality: Why a report from a treating physician who has seen you 30 times holds far more weight in court than an independent examiner who sees you for 20 minutes.

If you’ve been injured and feel like you’re losing the game, it might be time to change your quarterback.

Podcast Transcript: Flager Law Personal Injury Hour

Date: August 13, 2025

Host: Adam Flager

Co-Host/Moderator: Joe Dougherty

Guest: Dr. Christopher Belletieri, D.O. (Dedicated Doctors)

Joe Dougherty: All right, ladies and gentlemen around the Delaware Valley, welcome to the Flager Law Personal Injury Hour here on WWDB Talk 860. We’ve got a fantastic broadcast. Adam Flager, our host, how are you, sir?

Adam Flager: Doing well. Good to be with you again in this new format.

Joe Dougherty: Absolutely. It’s fantastic. As part of the new format, we’re going to get the opportunity to be available on Apple TV, Roku TV, and, of course, Fire TV—the streaming platforms. I’m ecstatic to have Dr. Chris Belletieri on the program. Doc, how are you, sir?

Dr. Belletieri: I’m doing well. How are you?

Joe Dougherty: I’m great. We’ve got a great show. Adam, go around the horn a little bit, if you will, and remind our listeners about yourself and the firm.

Adam Flager: Sure. Adam Flager, Flager Law, personal injury lawyers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We handle motor vehicle cases, dog bites, slip and falls, dangerous products—you name it.

Joe Dougherty: And so our guest for the broadcast, Dr. Chris Belletieri. Chris, a little bit about yourself, your pathway, and of course, we’ll get into the practice.

Dr. Belletieri: Sure. I graduated from medical school in 1996; I went to the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine on City Line Avenue. I then completed a residency in family medicine. That was three years I did at the time it was called Delaware Valley Medical Center. It’s now Jefferson Bucks, by Sesame Place. So, I did three years of postgraduate training there, and then I finished that in 1999 and I’ve been in private practice ever since. I did go on to also—I was brought on at Lower Bucks Hospital to start the Family Medicine Residency program there in 2012. So, I’m the program director there for the family medicine residency program, and I have been since 2012. I was also the Chief of Staff for four years at Lower Bucks Hospital; that ended about two years ago.

Joe Dougherty: And so, you know, today’s discussion is going to center around your practice, the diversity of your practice, but also Flager Law and the personal injury practice, and the synergy between both practices. And so, typically, Adam, in this space, how often is a family practice actually brought into the injury process when it comes to an injured worker, or an injured somebody who was injured in an auto accident or due to the negligence of somebody else? We’ve talked about it many times, and Dr. Belletieri’s practice is very interesting because, as we know, not everybody does injury victims.

Adam Flager: Yeah, there are a lot of family medicine practices where our clients will have a relationship with them for dozens of years—decades—and they’ll say, “Hey, yeah, let me go see Dr. Smith after this accident.” And I say, “That’s great, but they may not treat you.” “Oh no, no, you don’t understand, they’ve known me for 20 years.” I said, “Okay, well, if they don’t treat you because it’s an accident, just let me know.” And then, you know, I get a call two days later: “Yeah, they won’t see me because it’s from a car accident.” So then they need to go somewhere else. A lot of doctors just don’t want to touch it. And so the good part about Dr. Belletieri and his partner, Dr. Fischer, at Dedicated Doctors, is that you still have that kind of warmth and familiarity of a family practice, but they also know how to handle and will handle those types of cases.

Joe Dougherty: And so, Doc, if you will, it is a unique situation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve brought that scenario up where you know you’ve been seeing your family doctor forever—like a part of the family—like I’m sure you are with so many of your patients. I mean, my mother could call them and they were part of our life. However, now, like what Adam said, if you end up going to a family physician and they look at you like, “I can’t help you,” what is the reason for that? Because your practice is very unique and very accommodating both to your patients and of your family practice, but also to others who have gotten injured.

Dr. Belletieri: Yeah, sure. So, in my experience talking to colleagues of mine who don’t do personal injury, it’s really for a couple of reasons. Number one is the billing aspect. You’re not billing Medicare or the medical insurance; it’s a whole different animal. You are billing a workers’ compensation carrier or a motor vehicle carrier. It’s a totally different ballgame. So you need to be familiar with the law, you need to be familiar with the limits of the policies and all that. And a lot of family docs are not—first of all, I was never trained in that. I learned it after residency on the fly. So, I just sort of educated myself, but we’re not taught that in med school, and you’re not taught that in residency. So a lot of docs are just gun-shy because they are not familiar with the billing aspect of it. The second barrier that I’ve heard a lot from my colleagues is they just don’t want to get involved in the legal end of it. They don’t want to have to potentially testify and write legal documents, and medical-legal work is just something that most doctors don’t want to get involved in.

Joe Dougherty: And having said that, Adam, obviously, that doesn’t just go for family physicians; that goes for a lot of different physicians. How important is it in your world to have patient advocates that will take the time to educate themselves on the issues that Dr. Chris just talked about? Because in many cases—and God hope nobody ever gets in a car accident or injured at work, but we all know that’s not the case—how important is it to have doctors like Dr. Chris and, at the same time, a network of specialists that are willing to do this? Not only treat the patient but also to go to bat for him, like Dr. Chris said, in regards to the legal process.

Adam Flager: Sure, no, it’s invaluable. Because first and foremost, you always want your clients to get good care, right? And I tell clients this all the time: case or no case, you want to get better, right? I tell that to people that may not have a case at all, but I’ll still say, “Go get treatment.” You still have an injury. I may not be able to help you, but you still need to get better. And even more so when it is a client, I want them to have a good doctor who also knows how to handle an injury case, knows the right treatment to get them better, or the right person to send them to if they need a specialist, and will be an advocate for our clients. You know that’s really like a double whammy, almost, right? They have the bedside manner, they are good doctors, and they’ll also help out—not just healing them, but helping us build a case that supports my client, their patient.

Joe Dougherty: And so in your world, let’s talk about personal injury and a wide array of personal injury types of issues that you cover. Of course, auto accidents, but go around the horn a little bit, if you would, for our listeners, so they understand the wide array of issues and accidents and types of cases that you handle.

Adam Flager: Sure. I mean, when we say motor vehicle, that could be anything from you’re in a vehicle with another vehicle, or you’re on a bus, or you get hit by a bus or a tractor-trailer or some other type of work vehicle or commercial vehicle, or you get hit while you’re a pedestrian or you’re riding a bicycle. So there are a lot of different things under that one umbrella. You can also, like I said, handle dog bites or slip and falls—and slip and falls and premises cases where trip and fall can be a very big area, right? That’s anything from concrete that’s deteriorating on a sidewalk, or a raised lip, or ice in the winter that wasn’t properly cleared from an area, to you’re in a store and something’s on the ground that shouldn’t have been or should have been cleared. It could be a lot of things like that as well. And then dangerous products—you use a product that malfunctions or doesn’t function the way it’s supposed to, leading to a serious injury. So there are a lot of different areas.

Joe Dougherty: And so when you get into that situation, in many cases—and what today’s broadcast is about—is spotting Dr. Belletieri’s practice in a lot of different areas because it’s a very diverse, robust practice. One of the things that really is amazing to me is that unless you were treating with Dr. Belletieri for a standard ailment like a cold or COVID, you may never know, if you get injured, unless you met Adam Flager or one of the professionals at the firm. It’s not real easy to find a doctor’s network that are patient advocates and educated in the legal issues that Dr. Chris talked about. Talk about that, Adam, and the importance of that network and the fact that regular folks like myself, unless I met yourself, it’s not easy to find somebody who understands the medical and legal at the same time.

Adam Flager: Yeah, and that kind of goes back to what we were saying before. You want someone that’s a good doctor, but that’s also going to help you out. In these situations, you can have as long of a relationship as you might have with the doctor, but if this isn’t something that they encounter a lot of, then they’re not going to know what to do. And so really, having those doctors that say, “Yeah, this isn’t the first car accident; it’s not their first rodeo,” who have done it dozens, hundreds, thousands of times over a period of years—those are the people you want to send your clients to because they understand them the best and they’ll get the treatment the best.

Joe Dougherty: No question. But my point is, it’d be real hard for me to find somebody who handles medical-legal unless I went to an attorney like yourself because it’s a rare, rare thing. Even outstanding doctors have relationships with other doctors, probably way more that don’t understand it. So the best place to find it is when you learn your legal rights—when you’re talking to an attorney who can direct you to a medical professional in that particular arena.

Adam Flager: And they tell us, right? Over the years, myself as well as my father have sent many clients to Dedicated Doctors to treat, and they always have that same positive feedback: they help get me better, and they’re great guys as well, and the staff and the team are great. That’s what you get, and that’s what you want, and that’s what your clients expect when they come to you asking, “Who do you have who can get me better?”

Joe Dougherty: So let’s get into practices. I know Adam, you and I, we talk about the contingency fee agreement. When it comes to yourselves, when somebody comes in with a consultation and they want to get an evaluation on their accident or whatever, it’s confidential, and of course, there’s no out-of-pocket costs for your services. But it’s interesting because in Dr. Belletieri’s world, there has to be knowledge when it comes to accident victims. In that same way, there is no contingency fee agreement. At the same time, you have cases that can be claim petitions where people are working—and now they’re not—and they don’t have the funds. What happens in that area, Dr. Belletieri, when you have an injured worker or somebody who now doesn’t have income and their personal insurance won’t pick it up?

Dr. Belletieri: So, as I indicated earlier, we bill the insurance first. So if it’s an MVA (motor vehicle accident), most of the time in Pennsylvania, people have $5,000, the minimum amount of personal injury protection, which—50/50—it’s already gone by the time they come to me because they had an ambulance ride, they had five CAT scans in the ER, and that 5,000 is gone. And if they don’t have medical insurance, then we just do our thing. We work with the Flagers and other firms that send us clients, and we just do our thing. We just wait and we kind of delay our payments. We don’t expect patients to pay upfront. Workers’ Compensation is a little bit different. Obviously, it’s more open-ended if the claim is accepted, but we have a lot of times where the claim is in dispute. So we just, again, we just do our thing. We treat the patient first and foremost, just like Adam said. My primary goal is to get people better. And in any patient—no matter if they’re diabetic, or they have heart disease, or they’re injured—whatever it may be, my primary focus is to get them better. And, you know, obviously I’d like to get paid for what I do, but that’s the secondary concern of mine. It really is; we deal with it later. We focus on the patient and the patient care and getting them well.

Joe Dougherty: Okay, so let’s delve a little bit more into the practice. Talk first off about your team at the practice and the culture there—what clients can expect no matter how they walk through your doors.

Dr. Belletieri: Sure. Back in ’99, I started working in Bensalem and opened an office under another physician who was a private owner. I opened a brand new office from scratch and built the practice from scratch over the years. We moved to a second site in Bensalem, and then during COVID, we moved to Bristol. So we’re actually in the medical office building on the grounds of Lower Bucks Hospital. We’re not owned by them; we’re still private, but that’s where our office is now. We have a small staff, as Adam indicated. It’s myself and Dr. Fischer—Dr. Michael Fischer’s my partner. Just two doctors, and we have four staff members. That’s it. And those four staff members, three of them have been with me for 20-some years, so we’re all extremely close. And I mean, you know, it’s not an exaggeration to say we are a family. I mean, quite frankly, we spend more time together often than we do with our own families. Fortunately, my wife is one of our employees too, so that’s nice. She does marketing for us and other odd jobs as well. But, yeah, it’s a totally tight-knit atmosphere in the office. It’s only four staff members and two doctors. We do have a lot of medical students that come through. We have a lot of residents that come through. So there are a lot of learners. We have PA students from PCOM that come through. So that’s always a nice element—young doctors kind of learning on the fly in the office as well.

Joe Dougherty: And Adam, ironically, we talk about it all the time—a family-owned practice at Flager Law. Talk about that synergy there and how it works for your office and in the synergy with Chris’s office because obviously you both understand each other and your businesses.

Adam Flager: Well, we know a thing or two about being a family and having a family environment. Obviously, I work with my father. My stepmother, Sherry, is our office manager. My sister’s our bookkeeper. Two of our paralegals are mother-daughter. We used to have two staff members that were cousins. So we’re physically family. And then there’s that element of we work together for so many years. As Dr. Belletieri said, we were actually just talking about this at lunch a couple days ago—how many years everyone at the office has been there. Our receptionist, Charlotte, has been at the firm, I think 27 years. My paralegal has been there about 12. You know, we even have a couple people that worked for us years and years ago and came back in more recent years. So you have that. And the reason why that’s so great is because we’re all on the same page. We have that warm environment, and our clients feel that. And that’s what I was mentioning earlier with Dr. Belletieri’s office—his patients can feel that same comfort level because his office has it, and therefore that’s projected out. We pride ourselves on having that same relaxed, warm environment, so that you feel like a family, you get treated like a family, and we help you through a scary time.

Joe Dougherty: Speaking of working with family, I did have my wife working with me. We worked together on our restaurant.

Unknown Speaker: We lasted about seven or eight minutes!

Joe Dougherty: Family environment! So, you know, I love the synergy between the law firm and the practice. I love my wife to death, but you know—Doc, how is that dynamic in working together all day and then bringing it home? It works for a lot of people; other times, you know, you got to take a little bit of a break at dinner.

Dr. Belletieri: Yeah, sure. I mean, look, overall, it’s great. And she—it’s nice to have another set of eyes and have somebody who really has my back. So, I mean, she’s seen stuff that I’m not noticing, and she’ll bring it to my attention when somebody else might not, because she really has a vested interest in the practice. So it’s nice. Of course, there are times where we have to say, “You know, that’s enough for the day, let’s turn off.”

Joe Dougherty: Now, it’s funny because I had another set of eyes also, but they were on me! Anyway, nobody says we can’t have fun on the show. No question. I mean, I love the synergy between the law firm and the practice—bedside manner, patient communications. Talk a little bit about Dr. Fischer and how you guys kind of came together. Because it’s funny—when we’re in law firms and then medical practices, there’s your marriage at home, and then, of course, there’s another marriage. It’s almost a second marriage. Talk about how that came about and how you guys complement one another.

Dr. Belletieri: So I’ve known Mike for 25-plus years. We actually met at Delaware Valley Medical Center, which is now Jefferson Bucks Hospital, when I was an intern. So it was my first year out of medical school, and he was rotating there as a medical student, and that’s how I first met him. And we still reminisce a little bit about how, during lunch break, I would sit down with the med students—him being one of them—and kind of go over the patients and give little lectures. There’s this one in particular that he always remembers—a little talk I gave about diabetes, just like the basic pathology of it and how you treat it and so forth. And he still remembers that, still remembers the room in the hospital that we had this little chat. So that’s how we met. And then when he finished medical school, finished his internship and residency, he joined the practice that I was part of.

Joe Dougherty: He’s also a family physician?

Dr. Belletieri: Correct, yep. We’re both board-certified in family medicine.

Joe Dougherty: And when it comes to the business stuff and the culture of the practice—the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing. Because everybody knows I’m not a back-of-the-house guy. You don’t want me doing the bills or the invoicing. Here, we have a great synergy. Are there different areas where you and your partner complement one another?

Dr. Belletieri: I mean, we try to both be aware of everything, but you know, we’ll defer to one another. Like, we had to do a Medicare re-credentialing thing last month, and it was a two or three-hour job, and I did that. And then there might be something like, actually, right now we’re switching—our credit card machine is antiquated, so we had to come up with a new company to go with. So he’s calling around and trying to get the best deal and playing this one against the other one. So he’s handling that. We share the projects as they come.

Joe Dougherty: Adam, it’s interesting because this is this family firm, and Chris, I don’t know if you know Randy’s father, but he looks like he’s our age. I could have, when I saw him, I first met him, I’m thinking, “I wonder if we were the same senior class.” And you know, he’s got me by 10 or 12 years. And as you well know, he’s in great shape. But he’s run a great practice. And I think one of the things that is a testament to when you have a law practice, a law firm, a medical practice, and you have those long-term employees—they want to be there. And Adam, when you came in—and obviously you were somewhere before you came into the practice—talk a little bit about getting involved in that. Because you bring the heir apparent into any business, and typically speaking, you want to make sure there’s great synergy. And obviously, there has been with Adam. Talk about you coming into your father’s practice and the atmosphere, knowing everybody since you were a kid for crying out loud.

Adam Flager: Yeah, because so many of the people have been here for so long. I knew them from coming to the office, some of them when I was still a kid and would come to the office to sell candy bars to raise money for a class trip or something. But also even when I was in law school and a young attorney. So I knew them for a long time, long before I was an attorney. I brought some experience that I had from private practice elsewhere and from working for the courts for a couple years, and have a slightly different perspective. So I could add something and not just have to rely on everything they did; I could say, “Hey, here are some things that I’ve done elsewhere. Maybe this is better, maybe this isn’t,” and bring something more to the table.

Joe Dougherty: Rumor was you came in and fired everybody on the first day to establish authority!

Adam Flager: Yeah, no! It’s been great. We really have people who love the atmosphere and love working here because it’s not like the taskmaster. It’s like: how do we all help each other do right by our clients?

Joe Dougherty: No question. And having a team that understands everyone is all-in, and every responsibility helps keep the practice alive—answering that phone and making sure that the culture is welcoming. I always thought that was one of the greatest things: team members understand the success is related to everyone’s job. Coming into that atmosphere is a fantastic situation to be in. Gentlemen, let’s take a quick break. We’re going to have more from the Flager Law Personal Injury Hour and our guest, Dr. Chris Belletieri, in just a minute.

(Commercial Break: Welcome to the Wildwoods island)

Joe Dougherty: Welcome back to the Flager Law Personal Injury Hour here on WWDB Talk 860. We’re here with our host, Adam Flager, and Adam’s guest, Dr. Chris Belletieri. We’re going to talk a little medicine now and kind of break down the practice. Doc, if you will, let’s talk a little bit about the family medicine practice. Tell us—it’s a full family practice service, talk a little bit about that and your clientele in that area.

Dr. Belletieri: Sure. Family medicine—full service. We see anything and everything, from little kids to elderly people. Every potential diagnosis you can imagine: diabetes, heart disease, coughs, colds, you name it. And it’s part of why I actually got into family medicine—it was the variety. When I was training in my residency and in med school, you have the classroom angle, but then you have the on-the-job training where you go and do rotations for, typically, a month. You do cardiology for a month, then surgery for a month, then GI for a month, and gynecology for a month. And every time I did something, I said, “Well, this is what I’m going to do.” Then the next month: “No, this is what I’m going to do.” So the logical progression for me was to do family medicine because I really enjoy everything. The other big reason why I chose family medicine is the ongoing relationships. Unlike specialists who might see a patient once or twice, I develop relationships. Some of them I’ve treated for 25 years—their parents, their children, their whole family. There’s nothing better than starting the office visit and the first five minutes is just catching up about kids, vacations, and the personal stuff. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a vast majority of my patients really are like extended family.

Joe Dougherty: Well, and you’re community-based. I love the name of the practice: Dedicated Doctors. But you are family physicians; those personal relationships. You’re also, in a sense, quarterbacking the cases, right? In other words, as people come in, you know if there are specialists involved. I can tell you how important it is to have a great family doctor because not knowing specialists and all that—talk about how you have those community relationships and being able to quarterback each person’s case so that you’re involved at every level.

Dr. Belletieri: Yeah, it’s another big function of mine—responsibility of mine—to educate the patient in a way that they can understand what’s going on with their diagnosis. Too many specialists are just way too technical, and the patient will go to see a cardiologist and come out of there with their heads spinning because they don’t know what the hell the guy just said to them. They call me terrified or confused, and I just break it down in layman’s terms and explain what the problem is, what their diagnosis is, and the treatment.

Joe Dougherty: I’ll tell you something that really blew my mind. Remember last year when I was injured? I had a foot injury. It was a seemingly insignificant injury. I woke up in the middle of the night, slipped on a sock. It was so insignificant I forgot about how it happened. I went to two emergency rooms—two of the best. The first thing they asked me was, “Was this a personal injury or a work injury?” If it was, they weren’t going to see me, which I didn’t know. What would I have done? After the second emergency room, the pain was ungodly. Thought it was an infection. You know what they told me to do? “Go to your family doctor.” I was sitting there going, “You got to be kidding me. I just came from the two best emergency rooms in the city.” And when I got to my family doctor, he knew exactly what the hell it was. He sent me to a specialist, and that’s how we handled it. But the value of your family doctor is so important. Adam, at the firm, talk about your cases where you’re quarterbacking—where individuals come in with a personal injury and it’s left to you to send them to a medical provider like Dr. Chris, or maybe a workers’ comp specialist. Talk about the importance for you to have a network around you and being able to quarterback that case legally and understanding the medical providers you’re sending to.

Adam Flager: Sure, yeah. I mean, there’s only a certain amount of things that we can do as attorneys, and obviously we’re limited because I’m a Juris Doctor, not a medical doctor. I can’t be there at these appointments and do all of that. I always say: I defer to the professionals in this area. So when you send a client to someone like Dr. Belletieri who can be that quarterback—if there is a need for a specialist, making sure they get there. We know a lot of doctors. If our client needs a podiatrist because he’s got a foot injury, then that’s where you need to get them. If it’s an orthopedist that’s specifically good with shoulders, that’s someone else compared to one that’s really good with hips or knees. Having all those people in your proverbial Rolodex to be able to say, “This person can handle it.” Dr. Belletieri, a good question for you would be: how do you know when it’s something you can handle and when you need to send them to that specialist?

Dr. Belletieri: I mean, there’s not an easy answer, but it’s really just my experience and my instincts. Clearly, there are red flags: if somebody’s really severely injured—fractures, or intracranial injuries, bleeds—that obviously warrants secondary or even tertiary level care right away. But generally speaking, we do our thing if it’s a relatively minor injury. At least initially, we’ll do some basic physical therapy first, hands-on modalities, maybe a chiropractor if warranted, some over-the-counter medications and so forth. And then we re-evaluate after six weeks or eight weeks and see where they are. If their symptoms blossom into something else that may warrant more diagnostic testing or investigation, or if they are just stagnant and not improving, then that would warrant more additional digging: MRIs and nerve tests and CAT scans. And then if those tests reveal anything of significance, then we would certainly refer to specialists at that point.

Joe Dougherty: One of the things that dawned on me—we talked about bedside manner and culture and communications. It’s the number one issue that a lot of clients have with professionals. Talk about when you two are working together, your interests are aligned on a client. Talk about the importance of the communication level between yourselves. For example, with an injured worker, it’s very likely over time—especially since these things can last a while—somebody starts to get beat up emotionally. Compliance might become an issue. Talk about the communications between the two of you so the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. Doc, when you notice somebody’s starting to get some emotional strain and things are going awry, talk about your communication with Adam.

Dr. Belletieri: So, I mean, I think it’s kind of like a bell curve situation. Most people do pretty well, but it’s the outliers—somebody who’s really severely injured on one end of the spectrum or the other. You bring up an interesting point about the emotional toll of injuries, particularly in work-related injuries, when somebody is out of work. My office is in Bristol right now; I have a lot of blue-collar patients and their work is their life. They’re so dedicated to work, and now they can’t work. I would say 90-plus percent of the time, these individuals end up getting depressed, anxious, and having emotional difficulty as a result of their physical injuries. And then, like you indicated, they may drop off. If we do notice that, we certainly would reach out—either to Adam or Randy directly. I have both of their cell phones, and we communicate freely via text message. If a patient has dropped off and I need their help to get them back in to see me, I would do that.

Joe Dougherty: Adam, jump in there. Because if you see red flags—these cases don’t always settle overnight, and there are ebbs and flows. How often do you find yourself as much a personal counselor as a legal counselor? I mean, you’re talking about working-class people whose main goal in life is to be able to provide for their family. That pain and just thinking about it gives me anxiety. How do you handle that and the communication back and forth when you can see a situation that might be going awry due to the stress of the case?

Adam Flager: Yeah, no, it happens somewhat frequently—that you have to really step in to be that life coach. And I think a large part of that is a feeling of just being overwhelmed. If you have all of these things going on in your life and you’re not feeling well and you’re maybe not working, so you’ve got those financial pressures, there is a big share of people that just kind of shut down. “Why am I even going to get treatment? I’m not going to get better,” and then all of that negative thought just snowballs. So really, when we get that call that, “Hey, this person’s been missing a lot,” having that good communication allows us to reach out to our client. “What’s going on? Can we fix them? Can we figure out a way for you to get help with childcare so that you can get to the doctor?” trying to get them back on track. I had a client a couple years ago who wasn’t getting an MRI. She said she had called her family doctor, but they hadn’t gotten back to her. I said, “You have a MyChart account with that practice. Send your doctor a message.” She sends the message: “Oh, my God, I’m totally sorry, it fell through the cracks. I’ll get you the MRI order right away.” But if I’m not there just to do that little, simple thing of motivating her and giving her the solution, then that doesn’t happen. If she doesn’t have that MRI, she can’t get an injection. Sometimes your client just needs to vent, and I’m the therapist on the couch. They get it out, they feel much better, and now they’re ready to go. So we really have to double as life coaches. But ultimately, as Dr. Belletieri said, our job is to help people. His job is to help people heal; my job is to give them that little bit of guidance so they can go to the right doctors to heal and then ultimately try to get everything in order to build a case and get them the maximum compensation that I can.

Joe Dougherty: So, Doc, you guys do physical therapy? I was doing a little research.

Dr. Belletieri: We don’t anymore in the office. When we relocated during COVID, we downsized a little bit. The therapist that we had in our office is in Bristol Borough now, like a mile from my office. He’s got his own place, so we refer to him. So it’s kind of the same setup; it’s just not physically in my office.

Joe Dougherty: Having said that, talk about the importance of having, like with Adam, a good network of attorneys who may be specialists in workers’ comp or Social Security disability. In your world, how important is it to have individuals—a network of specialists—around you? And how many of them meet your standards and also handle legal-medical issues? Because it’s a very specialized area, and you’re being relied upon by Randy or Adam. Talk about the importance of that medical network around you.

Dr. Belletieri: Yeah, absolutely, it’s critical. Personal injury medicine is definitely nuanced. It’s not the same as treating somebody who hurt their shoulder playing baseball. It’s a totally different ballgame when you have a medical-legal case, and it’s taken me 25 years to really build this network of specialists. It’s been hit-and-miss over the years, too, where I didn’t necessarily have somebody who was a great shoulder guy that knew medical-legal stuff. So I would send an injured patient to a shoulder guy, and they would be like, “There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s all in your head,” and that person is no longer on that list. So it’s taken me 25 years to develop a network of people who understand medical-legal aspects because it’s absolutely critical.

Joe Dougherty: When we look about the different modalities—the process of an injured worker coming into the practice—a lot of them have gone to panel doctors and they’re already beat up. How do you rebuild that relationship with somebody who comes in and is now gun-shy? How do you handle that situation from the get-go when somebody’s been going through something crazy like that?

Dr. Belletieri: It’s definitely a challenge. For the broader picture, I face that challenge not just with injured workers, but someone like a diabetic who had another doctor who was not handling them the way they should have been. I have to sort of rebuild that doctor-patient trust and get them back on track. These panel patients that you mentioned—they are often neglected and ignored. “There’s nothing wrong with you, go back to work.” There’s no real trust, no real relationship there. So I do have to work hard to build that and repair that when the patient comes in and they’ve had a poor experience like that. We do it all the time—just pick up the pieces, get them the testing they need, get them to the specialists they need, and move them in the right direction as quickly as possible.

Joe Dougherty: So, talk about the reports. Adam, in your world, medical reports are just one of the biggest stresses from the medical provider. Elaborate on that, and then let’s hear Dr. Belletieri talk about how he handles it.

Adam Flager: So in litigation, you have to have medical causation established by a professional. I can’t just say this car accident caused these injuries. You need a doctor to say: this incident caused these injuries which required this treatment. And you need them to say that within a reasonable degree of medical certainty. So you might have a doctor that’s doing a great job on the treating side, and then we’ll say, “Hey, I need that report that ties it all together,” and then they won’t do that. And now I have to find an independent medical exam, which can take time. It’s nice when you can have a treating doctor that will also put that together because Dr. Belletieri knows those people better than someone that’s just looking at them for 15 minutes. You want that person that’s treated them and seen the progression over time.

Joe Dougherty: Real quick, because we only have a minute—Doc, talk about the communication with the lawyers in regards to reports and depositions and the reliability that you provide.

Dr. Belletieri: Like Adam said, causality is key. And if it’s there, or if it’s not there—if it’s not there, it’s not there. But if it is, it is. I know a lot of my colleagues are not willing to go out on that limb, but to me, it’s just common sense. It’s just part of what I do. And I think Adam’s right that coming from the treating physician, somebody who’s seen the patient 25 or 30 times, is a lot more valuable than having an independent doctor that sees him for 20 minutes and renders an opinion.

Joe Dougherty: Dr. Chris Belletieri, contact information if somebody wants to get in touch?

Dr. Belletieri: My main office number is 215-633-1750. My office is at 501 Bath Road in the medical office building adjacent to Lower Bucks Hospital—Dedicated Doctors.

Joe Dougherty: Adam Flager, contact information for yourself at the firm?

Adam Flager: Adam Flager, Flager Law. We have offices in Trevose and Philadelphia. 215-953-5200, flagerlaw.com—F as in Frank L, A, G, E, R, L, A, W. And Flager Law on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Joe Dougherty: Fantastic broadcast. Doctor, I want to thank you for being our guest. Adam Flager, thanks for doing a great job as our host. I want to thank everybody for tuning in to the Flager Law Personal Injury Hour. On behalf of everybody on the broadcast, I’m Joe Dougherty, thanks for listening, everybody!