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When several contract medical professionals at a major West Coast health care center were informed they would be required — and not paid — to attend a six-hour OSHA safety course, plus a one-hour in-house course on email phishing, I heard about it from multiple people. Needless to say, they were not happy, so they complained to management.
But it gets worse. One of the people who reached out to me wrote that after the complaints, “The CFO announced, ‘We figured a way around that. We’ll just have our intermediary log on and take the test(s).’ That’s not only (deceptive), but identity theft! Dennis, can you imagine that?”
Yes, I sure can. It looks like this: “Will the responsible person please raise their hand? Good. Now, go home, grab a toothbrush and kiss your family goodbye, because you might be going away for quite some time.”
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This situation is perplexing for another reason: These medical professionals can each easily generate $2 million in revenue yearly, sometimes far more. So requiring them to pay for the required courses leads me to conclude that management was standing behind the door when common sense was handed out.
When your family doctor is owned by private equity
Do you have a family doctor? Probably not in the sense of a doctor who has her own general practice right downtown, is her own boss and makes her own medical decisions about your family’s welfare. It’s likely that a private equity firm, “Big Medicine” (what I’m calling the firm that owns the health care center I’m writing about) purchased her practice, and she now works for, and is beholden to, their bottom line.
It is no secret that the major consolidation of physicians’ offices and regional medical facilities — especially in radiology and cancer treatment — has been linked to patient dissatisfaction and significantly higher rates of unhappiness and burnout among physicians.
Anyone who doubts that should check out the report The Harm from Private Equity’s Takeover of Medical Practices and Hospitals by Andrew Schlafly, general counsel for the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons.
One physician friend compared what is happening to American medicine as “a version of the 1958 movie The Blob, in which a gelatinous alien from a crashed meteor begins consuming everything in its path.” (It’s a great flick, by the way, and free to watch online.)
Mr. CFO, will you please talk to me?
Of course, I wanted to verify what my medical sources were saying, so I phoned the main office where they work and asked to speak with the CFO, but wouldn’t you know it? He was too busy. So, I left my number so he could call me when he had some time to talk, and it has been days with no return call.
Next, I called the headquarters of Big Medicine, reached its equivalent of a media spokesperson’s office and left a polite request for a callback. You can guess how that turned out. Very few corporate employees are going to admit to a journalist, “Yeah, we were going to commit the kind of fraud that could land one of us in the slammer.”
Analysis from a labor and employment attorney
Over the years, several labor and employment attorneys have become friends of this column, providing insight into job-related issues that have greatly helped my readers.
When I ran what I knew by “Kate,” in Dallas, she said, “It is difficult to believe that management would be so reckless to save a few dollars, have an employee fraudulently assume the identities of these physicians and take the tests.
“But stupid, cheapskate decisions by people who should know better pay (attorneys’) bills.” (Kate asked not to be identified so she could speak bluntly.)
I asked her, “Does it make a difference if the medical professionals were actual employees or working as independent contractors and their employment agreement specified they were responsible for the cost of all required government tests or continuing medical educational expenses?”
She had a commonsense answer. “What their contract specified is not the issue,” she replied. “Trying to commit fraud on OSHA and assuming the identities of the physicians — that is the essence of what could boomerang down hard on whoever came up with that idiotic idea.”
What the employers face
If the people at this business actually carry out this fraudulent plan, they might want to know that submitting false documentation to OSHA regarding employee safety training constitutes a willful violation that can lead to criminal prosecution, up to five years in prison and substantial fines of more than $156,000 per violation. Knowingly falsifying records regarding training is a federal crime.
Whistleblower protections for reporting fake OSHA compliance
You would be surprised at the number of business owners we have briefly had as clients who were little more than crooks with a city business license, where providing safety equipment or being truthful on CAL-OSHA filings was seen as merely optional.
When employees discover these shenanigans, they feel torn between protecting their own jobs and reporting violations, which often include:
- Creating records of safety inspections or training classes that never occurred
- Falsely dating maintenance logs to mask missed servicing
- Hiding workplace illness or injury reports to conceal accidents
So, what can employees, like my readers, do?
First, gather evidence — copies of fake reports and photos — and store them in the cloud, under your own control rather than on a company-issued cellphone.
Report this to OSHA or your state’s version of OSHA. Both offer protection for whistleblowers.
Your employer would love for you to first speak with Human Resources or the compliance office where you work. However, most employment attorneys I know recommend against that to avoid retaliation, which happens even though it is illegal.
It is also a good idea to speak with an employment lawyer before making these reports, but you’ve got to be careful. Research the firm and individual lawyer(s) to see what other kinds of cases they handle.
You’ll want to avoid any personal injury mills across the country that advertise “We’ll fight for you,” even if they claim to specialize in employer-retaliation suits.
I would also highly recommend you check out my article Beyond the Bar: Your 5-Step Guide to Discovering Whether a Lawyer Is Shady.
Dennis Beaver practices law in Bakersfield, Calif., and welcomes comments and questions from readers, which may be faxed to (661) 323-7993, or e-mailed to Lagombeaver1@gmail.com. And be sure to visit dennisbeaver.com.
