BREAKING: A surgeon from the hospital that treated America's first known COVID patient told a Senate panel on Monday that his hospital inflated its COVID numbers, turned away unvaccinated patients, and then tried to end his career for speaking up.
Dr. James P. Miller worked as a staff surgeon and ICU provider at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. He also did independent quality reviews of the hospital's intensive care unit. On Monday he testified at a roundtable led by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson called "COVID-19 Hospital Protocols: Real Stories from Real People."
"The head of infectious disease medicine at my hospital privately told me that he was working with the state government to restrict the civil rights of unvaccinated people," Miller said. In Miller's account, a senior physician at one of the most closely watched hospitals in America was
helping state officials decide which citizens would keep their full rights. Washington state went on to impose some of the strictest vaccine mandates in the country, covering state workers, health care workers, and teachers. Nurses, state troopers, and other
public servants who refused the shot lost their jobs.
Miller told the panel that the hospital put out messaging that "falsely inflated COVID infections and deaths." He said he saw patients who died from trauma and other causes listed as COVID deaths. At the same time, news stories reported that the hospital was overwhelmed with COVID patients. Miller testified that the hospital never ran short of staff or equipment.
Those numbers mattered far beyond Everett. Governors and health officials across the country pointed to crowded hospitals to justify closing businesses, churches, and schools.
If the counts coming out of hospitals were padded, then some of the most sweeping orders in American history rested on bad information.
Miller also challenged the way the hospital handled remdesivir, the antiviral drug that became a standard COVID treatment. He said hospital leaders gave staff "misleading and inaccurate information" about the drug. He described a young trauma patient who met the guidelines for remdesivir. According to Miller, the infectious disease doctor privately told him not to give it to her because she "seemed like a nice girl."
"Any physician honestly reviewing the real-world data at that time could have recognized early that remdesivir caused more harm than good," Miller testified. If doctors privately steered patients they liked away from a drug they were giving everyone else, patients and families had a right to hear that concern out loud. "Primary care and urgent care physicians refused to see unvaccinated patients with the chief medical officer's knowledge and approval through policy," Miller said.
Millwe testified that hospital leadership, including the chief medical officer of his medical group, backed the local medical establishment's refusal to treat unvaccinated patients. Miller did not wait for permission to help the people who were turned away. He opened a free clinic through his local church to care for them. "The church became a licensed clinic," he said. Doctors take an oath to care for the sick. A policy that closes the clinic door because of a personal medical choice breaks that promise to every patient who walks up to it.
A hospital that can deny care over one personal choice can find reasons to deny it over others.
Miller paid a steep price for speaking out. "I endured countless unfounded disciplinary hearings, show trials and sham peer review procedures, which included the threat of me being arrested," he told the panel. He said
the aim of those actions was to take away his medical license. Miller said he defeated every one of those attacks and remains a physician in good standing.
In 2024, he filed a sworn statement in support of criminal investigations into wrongdoing during the pandemic. Peer review exists to protect patients from bad medicine. Miller described that same process being turned into a weapon against a doctor who asked hard questions. Other physicians at his hospital watched it happen. Doctors who saw what Miller went through had every reason to keep their own concerns to themselves.
Sen. Johnson has spent years pressing federal health agencies for records on COVID vaccines and treatment. Monday's roundtable turned the spotlight on hospitals, where decisions about care were made one patient at a time. Other witnesses shared stories of patients who say they were treated unfairly because they had not taken the vaccine.
Providence Regional Medical Center should answer Miller's charges under oath. Congress should demand the internal records on how COVID deaths were counted, how treatment protocols were set, and who decided that unvaccinated patients could be turned away.
State officials who worked with hospital leaders to limit the rights of their own citizens should have to explain those conversations in public.
Surveys show that American trust in doctors and hospitals has fallen sharply since 2020. Winning it back will require hospitals to open their books and tell the public what happened inside their walls. Dr. Miller took real risks to tell his part of that story, and the rest of us can make sure it gets heard.
- K. Blackwell
Someone commented elsewhere:
"January 2020 I got very ill. No doctor.
My Family doctor of 40 years had retired.
My dermatologist of 35 years told me to come in and he’d treat me. He did bloodwork, gave me Keflex for 10 days, I got better, but it lingered.
He did lung X-ray. Told me he had no idea what we were dealing with. He gave me an (old go-to) shot of Lincocin. Knocked it completely out. Later we realized it was first case of Covid in that professional building. Thank God I gave it to nobody else. I did wear a mask. N95 I fortunately had on hand from another condition. The combination of those drugs worked on me and he eventually treated others with same success. Then other doctors used it.
He knew what to do.
I was 70 years old. Underlying conditions. They didn’t even try other things to treat it.
It worked. God bless my doctor."
