Everett Surgeon Tells Senate COVID Roundtable: Hospital Protocols Raised Deaths, Leadership Punished Dissent

A trauma surgeon who worked at the Washington hospital that treated the first confirmed COVID-19 patient in the United States told a Senate roundtable Monday that internal quality reviews found billing fraud, that federal remdesivir protocols increased harm, and that the hospital’s infectious-disease chief privately said he was working with state officials to restrict the civil rights of the unvaccinated. Dr. James P. Miller testified at Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) event, “COVID-19 Hospital Protocols: Real Stories from Real People,” in the Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building. Johnson billed it as his first oversight session devoted entirely to what happened inside hospitals.

Miller said he was a staff surgeon and ICU provider at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett and also contracted independently to perform ICU quality reviews. The hospital admitted the first U.S. laboratory-confirmed case in January 2020, a Snohomish County man in his mid-30s who had returned from Wuhan. Infectious-disease specialist Dr. George Diaz led that patient’s care. Providence Everett became the first hospital in the world to give remdesivir for COVID-19 under an FDA protocol. Miller said he treated hundreds of COVID patients at the same facility.

“My reviews uncovered fraud extending to senior hospital leadership. I reported these findings,” Miller said. “There were protocols put in place that caused demonstrable harm and increased mortality.” After the hospital received remdesivir from the federal government, he said, “any physician honestly reviewing the real-world data at that time could have recognized early that remdesivir caused more harm than good.” Those statements are Miller’s testimony. The hospital and Diaz have not issued public responses to the Monday remarks in coverage reviewed for this article. Diaz has previously described the early case as a period of uncertainty and said the team used heavy personal protective equipment while developing system protocols.

Miller said the head of infectious-disease medicine at his hospital privately told him he was working with Washington state government to restrict the civil rights of unvaccinated people, including making driver’s-license renewal contingent on COVID vaccine status and thereby limiting their ability to drive and work. He said hospital leadership, including the chief medical officer of the medical group, endorsed a local practice of refusing primary and urgent care to unvaccinated patients. “I watched previously compassionate and devoted doctors and nurses become cruel and ambivalent about the well-being of patients as the COVID experience evolved,” he testified. In response, he said, he opened a free clinic through his church, which became a licensed clinic, and used treatments he said medical societies, pharmacists, social media, and health agencies had censored, including ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, zinc, quercetin, and exercise. When he spoke against the protocols and the alleged fraud, he said he was targeted with “baseless disciplinary actions” whose stated goal was to take his license.

The same roundtable included patients and families. Gail Seiler of Texas said that after a hospitalist learned she was unvaccinated, he told her she was going to die, limited her options to remdesivir and a ventilator, isolated her from family, and denied her food for 12 days and water for seven. She said she later recovered at home with treatments the hospital had refused. Johnson has held a series of hearings on the federal COVID response. Monday’s session was livestreamed. Miller’s fraud and civil-rights claims remain allegations presented as firsthand testimony. They have not been adjudicated in the roundtable record. The midterms are five weeks away. Johnson has said the hospital-protocol record still requires a full investigation so families are not put through the same practices again.