When you work for a large company there are often lots of opportunities to engage in fraud, theft, or other shady practices.

What would you do if you witnessed medical fraud being conducted by a coworker, and when you reported it to your manager, they basically ignored you?

That is what happened to the hospital worker in this story, so she filed an official complaint, but then she got fired the next day.

Fired from hospital job for reporting fraud

I worked at this level 1 trauma center (emergency room) in southeast Tennessee for a year and a half, and I loved it dearly.

This sounds like fraud to me.

There were some coworkers in registration doing shifty stuff and filling out medical claims/insurance/paperwork without speaking to the patients and then signing their paperwork (known as the COA).

I worked over in the children’s ER and because I never personally witnessed it, I never said anything.

Yeah, you can’t ignore this.

But one day, I actually caught coworker B committing forgery on a patient who needed worker’s comp and he reached out to me because he knew me and asked me to report it.

I approached Coworker B and asked if she had spoken to him.

She is just lying at this point.

She said yes, but then admitted she did not and did a standard auto accident claim because she didn’t know it was a worker’s comp claim.

Coworker C told me she had seen B do forgeries many times, and my partner told me to get the patient’s signature from him. She compared it to his signature on file and it did not match.

It sounds like she has done what she can do.

At no point did I open his chart because it was not part of my workflow, but I did tell my supervisor.

However, my supervisor is sketchy at best, and I felt scared about getting in trouble for not reporting it, so I made an official complaint through our integrity system and included the patient’s signature for them to inspect.

Maybe the supervisor shouldn’t be engaged in fraud.

I did this anonymously, but my supervisor called later and said I was making life difficult for her, I had no business filing a report, and that there was no fraud and hung up on me.

The next day, I was terminated alongside Coworker C who was included as a witness in the report.

This is just the excuse they needed to fire her.

She said that I violated HIPAA and went out of my workflow to cause a huge internal investigation. Coworker C was fired for being tardy (having no write ups or warnings at all).

I was devastated. I just found out I was six weeks pregnant (currently 10 weeks) and my life felt ruined.

Hmm, it seems like this would be their exact jurisdiction.

I filed a Whistleblower complaint against the hospital through the EEOC website but was told it was outside their jurisdiction.

I sought out an attorney, but most attorneys are unwilling to go against the hospital because of their size, or conflict of interest, and the one attorney from Nashville who said I definitely have a case has since ghosted me.

So, they have a history of doing this.

This hospital just settled a whistleblowing lawsuit for surgical fraud this year where they fired two employees for reporting fraud too, but I’ve decided to give up.

I just wanted to share my story so I can move on.

Well, if people keep giving up on holding them accountable, they will never stop doing it.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

It sounds like this commenter has experience in this area.

Yeah, don’t let them get away with it.

This commenter has some good advice.

Yeah, why wouldn’t they?

This is a good recommendation.

If you give up, they get away with it.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.