The UPMC whistleblower case
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The UPMC whistleblower case is a suit against neurosurgeons at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, reinstated by a federal appeals court at the end of 2019, alleging that they inflated the number of spine operations performed and carried out needlessly complex procedures to increase earnings. John Kiriakou discussed it with an unusual declaration of interest: "I'm from the Pittsburgh area. I was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area."

He stresses the standing of both institutions involved. UPMC is "one of the most highly respected medical conglomerates in the United States," and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which broke the story, "is a very serious newspaper. It's a serious investigative journalism site."

The charge as he reads it

What Kiriakou draws out is not the billing but the risk. Beyond profit maximisation, "they were purposely putting people's lives at risk in order to maximize these profits. That takes a certain kind of sickness."

He treats the silence around it as a failure of national journalism: "this is a bigger story than the national media has given it credit for being, frankly. The reporting has pretty much only been in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This is something that needs to go national, because I believe it's indicative of a bigger and broader problem throughout healthcare."

The False Claims Act

Asked about the statute, Kiriakou described it as purpose-built for exactly this. "This is exactly why the False Claims Act was passed into law in the first place, to expose and to out organised criminal activity when it comes to inflating billing operations."

The analogy he reaches for: "we go after the Mafia using RICO statutes. Well, this is kind of the RICO statute of health care. We have this law for a reason. We have this law because earlier whistleblowers have shown us that such a law was necessary." And the conclusion follows: "if this brings down doctors, neurosurgeons, if it brings down corporate leaders at UPMC, then it needs to be done."

See also

- Corporate Whistleblower Protections
- Whistleblower Protection Act
- The death of investigative journalism
