The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington announced that MultiCare Health System, a Tacoma-based hospital and healthcare system that owns and operates MultiCare Deaconess Hospital (Deaconess) and MultiCare Rockwood Clinic in Spokane, will pay $3,728,000 to resolve federal and state allegations that it knowingly endangered patient safety and falsely and fraudulently billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal healthcare programs for spinal surgery procedures performed at Deaconess between 2019 and 2021, by Dr. Jason Dreyer, formerly a licensed physician and MultiCare neurosurgeon. This settlement with MultiCare comes after two years of successful federal litigation by the United States and the State of Washington, and is part of six years of federal and state investigations, which resulted in a multi-million dollar settlement with Providence Health & Services (Dr. Dreyer’s previous employer) in 2022, and a more than $1.1 million individual settlement with Dr. Dreyer in 2023, which resolved the allegations of the fraud committed while at MultiCare and a nine year exclusion of Dr. Dreyer from Medicare.
In this settlement, MultiCare made factual admissions regarding its conduct, agreeing to pay a total of $3.728 million, $1.6 million of which is restitution, due to the egregious nature of MultiCare’s violations of federal and state law as shown by its own admissions and detailed court records. Based on MultiCare’s factual admissions and court records, the investigation and resulting litigation has shown that MultiCare hired, credentialed, and supervised Dr. Dreyer while MultiCare ignored and failed to take appropriate action on numerous red flags, warnings, and specific evidence of Dr. Dreyer’s fraud and endangerment of the public, all while increasing its own revenue with fraudulently obtained taxpayer money.