Out of Pod Experience

Hey,
I need to know who to call to be a whistle blower

My girlfriend works in a nursing home facility as a speech pathologist. She deals mostly with stroke and TBI patients. The facility only makes money on certain types of medicare patients. Because of this, and their declining revenues, the facility has changed practices that are, in my girlfriends opinions, leading to unnecessary deaths and unethical treatment practices.

Now, she says the state inspector is not the agency or government entity to report it to. They mostly investigate billing fraud and documentation processes.

So, who should she call.

I am a big advocate of the greatest evil in the world being the indifference of good people. She sees something sooo wrong, shes afraid it will tarnish her whole career, being linked to this facility. (I know, it a selfish root, but she does want to stop the wrong doing)

Who do we call on either a standard state regulatory or federal level.

For what I know from the USA, hire a Criminal/negligence/appropriate field Lawyer first before the drama ensues, consult him, then proceed with whatever plan he recommends.

Else this could blow in her face. Badly.

I can comment with firsthand experience on the matter. I used to work for a DoD contractor in the DC area and had my career completely destroyed because I didn't know how to go about the matter.

She needs to be discreet in this, her employer WILL retaliate and do and say anything to try to undermine her, her reputation, and what she reports. If what you've written is true, and if she makes allegations, there are going to be people with an AWFUL lot to lose. They will act desperately, will make false, retaliatory accusations and fabricate things to show the whistleblower in the worst possible light. They also have more resources immediately on hand (legal team, ability to hire private investigators, look into her background for anything that could be used against her or twisted in some way) and it will be a completely asymmetrical fight until, and if the proper authorities get involved.

She needs to judge carefully whether there's really any point reporting her concerns to management, if there isn't, she's best off continuing to work there while very discreetly consulting with an attorney to get in touch with the proper investigating authority while continuing to observe and report on the conditions at her workplace. She'll need to document things, and I don't mean necessarily taking pictures, video, or copying computer records (the things that could be proven by any of that will come to light as the management fractures and turns on one another in a desperate attempt to save their own asses under the weight of a proper investigation), but privately document problems, issues, and potential evidence to be searched for in written form that will be able to be strongly corroborated and proved in the course of an investigation as evidence is uncovered and interviews of management, personnel, and patients and their families are performed.

In all respects she will need to be a model employee during this process as to not cast any doubts on her motives if or when it becomes publicly known her involvement in bringing these conditions to light and act as normally as possible as to not arouse any suspicions of her, or that she may have certain feelings about matters at her workplace.

If she does report her concerns to management who would be more inclined to get rid of her as an internal "troublemaker" and loses her job on some pretext management comes up with, it will at worst completely undermine her case as the employer may be able to effectively paint HER as a retaliatory, disgruntled ex-employee with an axe to grind (which was initially the case in my situation), or at the very best, as it eventually turned out to be in my situation, considerably delay the proper and correct resolution of the matter by investigators and the authorities for months (or even years).

Even in the best of scenarios, there is a very strong possibility, even a probability that she could see herself blacklisted in her chosen career field.

This may be a good start: https://oig.hhs.gov/

But be aware a fed OIG may have a very slow response time given their caseload.

Thanks for the responses guys.

Personal lawyer it is.....I may or may not update you all on this experience depending on the progress after we get professional council.

Irish

must.... resist... temptation... to... go off topic

If she played eve she'd know what to do.

Video tape everything then blackmail them

Anonymous via the ways I recommended would be good.

I'd call up your state's Department of Health. Most have some method for reporting incidents or problems at nursing homes.

There's also the state Adult Protective Services agency. They're supposed to prevent abuse of elderly or infirm people. In some states, though, they can't investigate unless an elderly/infirm person reports the abuse directly. But a good APS case worker can advise on other ways to report problems.

As for whistle blowing protection.... Under Federal law, it's illegal to retaliate against a whistle blowing employee. The laws are really stacked in the employee's favor vs. the employer on this. The states have similar anti-retaliation laws, and some big cities have their own as well. So as an employee, you have at least two different sets of laws to bring down on the head of your employer.

But before actually making the whistle blowing report, your girlfriend should consult with an employment law attorney. She'll need a strategy for documenting her work conditions before and after she makes the report. If the employer starts getting nasty, it will have unknowingly walked into an anti-retaliation ambush. (Retaliation doesn't just mean terminating the employee. If the employer starts giving the employee bad performance reviews, reduced hours, a worse work schedule, passing her over for promotion, etc., that's retaliation). The key thing is to take action on the retaliation as soon as it happens. The statute of limitations deadlines on retaliation claims tend to be pretty short.