Orthopedic surgeon demands $6M from Summit Health

A former Summit Health physician claims that the health care conglomerate underpaid him by millions of dollars after it took over Westmed Medical Group.

Michael Cushner, an orthopedic surgeon, is demanding $6 million from Summit Health, in a July 23 complaint filed in Westchester Supreme Court.

Summit and its affiliates “acted in bad faith” by failing to credit him for his performance, the complaint states, and forced him “to change his coding practices.”

Summit merged with WestMed in January 2022, then ten months later merged with CityMD, to create one of the largest health care provider groups in the U.S.

Cushner had been a WestMed shareholder, and he was hired by Summit.

His annual compensation was pegged at $1.9 million, according to the complaint, and he could earn more based on performance measurements.

Cushner used physician assistants and nurses at WestMed to prepare patients for evaluations, and he coded the office visits under his name. He says the arrangement maximized his productivity and WestMed’s profitability.

He says he continued the arrangement with Summit’s awareness and approval.

Then months later, in April 2022, Summit wanted to renegotiate his employment agreement. By then, according to the complaint, Cushner had already achieved 65% of his target performance measurement. If he remained consistent he would earn more than $4.3 million.

By the end of 2022, he says Summit owed him an extra $2.4 million.

In 2023, Summit unilaterally decided to credit Cushner for 46% of his 2022 performance measurement, the complaint states, contending that he had improperly coded his work.

Summit allegedly forced him to change the way he coded patient visits, and it calculated that it owed Cushner an extra $146,855 for 2022.

Cushner claims that under the terms of his employment and compensation agreements, he was also entitled to $2.7 million in 2023.

Summit does not comment on litigation, attorney Nicholas C. Meyer stated in email, in reply to a message asking for Summit’s side of the story.

Now Cushner, of Yorktown Heights, is Chief of Orthopedics at St. John’s Riverside Hospital in Yonkers, and he has opened an orthopedic surgery and sports medicine practice, Cushner Ortho.