Two Separate Whistleblower Lawsuits Allege Hospitals Kept Dangerous Surgeons Operating, Then Retaliated Against Staff Who Complained

OSF Saint Anthony: Patients Left Under Anesthesia, Surgeon Fell Asleep

Three former surgical-services leaders at OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, Illinois filed an 18-page whistleblower lawsuit in Winnebago County Circuit Court alleging the hospital ignored repeated patient-safety failures in its neurosurgery department and retaliated against the employees who raised alarms, according to Fox News.

The plaintiffs — Sofia Gudino, Tina Peppers, and Cindamon Proffitt — held leadership roles covering operating-room safety, regulatory compliance, and surgical operations. Their complaint alleges they began documenting what they call "repeated and dangerous safety violations" in the neurosurgery service line starting in late 2023.

The specific incidents are stark. On October 12, 2023, OR staff observed a neurosurgeon fall asleep against the surgical microscope during an active procedure. According to the complaint, Peppers had warned the hospital's chief medical officer before that surgery that proceeding was dangerous because the surgeon had worked late the prior night and had already completed a full day of operations. The warning was disregarded.

On February 3, 2025, two neurosurgeons left a patient under general anesthesia on an operating room table for approximately one hour, the complaint alleges. On April 17, 2025, a neurosurgeon left another anesthetized patient for roughly 37 minutes to attend a meeting while the second neurosurgeon also stepped away, leaving the patient with no surgeon present.

The billing angle makes this more than a patient-safety story. The complaint alleges patients are charged by the minute for OR time, meaning those absent stretches translated directly into fraudulent charges billed to people who were unconscious and had no idea they were being charged for a room their surgeon had walked out of.

OSF HealthCare has not been quoted directly in the sources with a response to the specific allegations.

MultiCare and Dr. Jason Dreyer: Hired With Red Flags, Kept on Despite a Federal Investigation

A separate case out of Washington state goes further in terms of documented government involvement. On January 26, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington announced a False Claims Act complaint against MultiCare Health System, according to Whistleblowers Blog.

The government's complaint alleges that Dr. Jason Dreyer resigned from Providence St. Mary's Medical Center in 2019 amid allegations he was performing medically unnecessary spinal surgeries, harming patients, and falsifying diagnoses. MultiCare, the complaint alleges, was aware of those concerns and specific "red flags" about Dreyer's surgical judgment during its own hiring process. It hired him anyway in July 2019, with internal communications allegedly noting he was a "workhorse."

The situation worsened. By February 2020, MultiCare allegedly knew the U.S. government was actively investigating Dreyer. The complaint alleges the hospital continued to let him see patients and perform surgeries until March 2021.

"MultiCare was aware of serious concerns that Dr. Dreyer was putting patients in danger," said U.S. Attorney Vanessa R. Waldref. "The Complaint alleges that MultiCare nonetheless made the decision to allow him to treat and operate on patients, even after it became aware of the federal investigation."

The government alleges MultiCare fraudulently billed Medicare, Washington State Medicaid, the VA Community Care program, TRICARE, and the Federal Employee Health Benefits program for millions of dollars during that window. Steven J. Ryan, Special Agent in Charge of the HHS Office of Inspector General, called it an exploitation of taxpayer-funded programs that "undermines the public's trust in the health care system."

The case began as a qui tam lawsuit filed by a former Dreyer patient. The Justice Department intervened and took over the suit, a signal the government views the evidence as strong enough to pursue directly.

The Systemic Problem Both Cases Expose

The strongest counterargument defenders of these hospitals will make is that internal review processes exist precisely to catch outliers, and that whistleblower lawsuits represent one-sided accounts before any adjudication. Courts have not ruled on either complaint. The allegations in both are unproven as of June 24, 2026. OSF Saint Anthony and MultiCare are entitled to contest every claim.

The documented pattern in both cases is not a single mistake. The OSF complaint describes administrators receiving specific pre-surgery warnings and allowing surgery to proceed anyway. The MultiCare complaint describes a health system that allegedly kept a surgeon on after knowing about both a prior hospital's concerns and an active federal probe. These are not allegations of negligence. They are allegations of deliberate institutional decisions to suppress or ignore safety information.

The False Claims Act's qui tam provision exists because Congress recognized that insiders often have the best view of institutional fraud, and that without financial incentives and legal protection, most would stay quiet. Qualified whistleblowers in FCA cases can receive a share of government recovery, typically 15 to 30 percent when the government intervenes.

What Comes Next

In the MultiCare case, the government's intervention means federal prosecutors are now driving the litigation. A trial date has not been publicly announced in available sources. In the OSF case, the Winnebago County lawsuit is at its filing stage, and no investigation by the Illinois Department of Public Health or any federal agency has been announced.

The unresolved question in both cases is the same: what did hospital leadership know, when did they know it, and how do you hold an institution — not just a surgeon — legally accountable when administrators override the people whose job it is to sound the alarm?