Ex-safety manager sues MultiCare, alleges wrongful termination for reporting hazards
A former safety manager has sued MultiCare, alleging that the health system retaliated against him for whistleblower complaints he filed.
Christopher LaDue’s lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Pierce County Superior Court, names MultiCare and The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
He accused MultiCare of failing to address his concerns, and The Joint Commission of making it obvious that he was the whistleblower.
“While employed at MultiCare as the Manager of Safety and Environment of Care, Mr. LaDue tried to address unsafe and unsanitary conditions that existed at many of MultiCare’s locations,” his attorney Kristi Favard said in a statement. “MultiCare’s management was aware of, and acknowledged, the risks to the public these conditions posed but knowingly did not address them for financial reasons.”
A spokesperson for The Joint Commission said the organization does not comment about pending litigation.
MultiCare said in a statement that it wasn’t in a “position to comment on the allegations or their merit.”
It went to say that: “As a general comment, there is no higher priority to MultiCare than the safety of our employees and the patients we serve, and that is reflected in our practices and facilities. Thousands of people trust us to provide quality health care every day, and we do not take that trust for granted. We know we have to earn it by delivering safe and high-quality care on every occasion.”
The lawsuit makes these allegations:
LaDue started working at MultiCare in 2017 as the manager of safety and environment of care, supervising the Safety Department.
That part of the company is “charged with ensuring that MultiCare is meeting all safety standards required by regulating agencies, including but not limited to the Department of Health and the Commission, from sterilization of operating rooms to preventing patients from breathing unclean air from construction work being performed to ensuring that access points are staffed with the appropriate security,” the lawsuit said.
LaDue found the company was not in compliance with many requirements and notified his supervisor.
He allegedly pointed out various issues, such as “mold in the showers and on the windows at the Mary Bridge Treehouse Family Housing, mold in the neonatal intensive care unit at Tacoma General Hospital, and a construction contractor not being in compliance with environment of care standards and exposing patients to construction dust, debris and mold,” the lawsuit said.
When the health system allegedly didn’t act on various recommendations LaDue made, he filed anonymous whistleblower complaints with the state Department of Health and The Joint Commission.
Asked about the outcome of those complaints, the state Department of Health said Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup received a statement of deficiencies that it resolved. No deficiencies were found in a case against Tacoma General/Allenmore Hospital in Tacoma, following investigation. Health department officials declined to divulge more information and advised The News Tribune to submit a public records request for the documents, which the news organization has done.
LaDue’s superior identified him as the whistleblower after the commission sent his complaint to MultiCare verbatim. He’d provided information from those same reports to his superiors previously.
MultiCare allegedly retaliated by revoking a promotion and preventing him from doing his job.
“LaDue faced a pervasively hostile work environment that worsened each day, and which was carried out by MultiCare’s senior managers and trickled down within the organization,” the lawsuit said.
He gave his 30-days notice in August 2018, at which point the company fired him.
“Mr. LaDue was simply doing his job when he reported the public health hazards at numerous MultiCare locations, which MultiCare had been turning a blind eye to for years and had no plans to improve despite the known risk of serious illness, or even death,” Favard’s statement said.
It went on to say they “hope that the public attention Mr. LaDue’s case is receiving will result in MultiCare complying with hospital and clinical safety standards and eliminate the risk of harm to the public.”
The Washington State Hospital Association has a website, wahospitalquality.org, with various health data about facilities across the state.
There’s also a federal tool that compares different data about facilities at medicare.gov/care-compare/.
