Wonderful world of whistleblowers

I was reminded this week that many people may not be fully aware of what qualifies one to use the term ‘whistleblower.’

There was an exchange on X that highlights this confusion.

A few facts about whistleblowers:

• A whistleblower is any person who reports fraud, misconduct, unsafe working conditions, or other violations of a U.S. law to the government, regulators, or the media.  

• A whistleblower only has to have reasonable belief that wrongdoing has happened, they can be mistaken and still be protected (even in California!) as long as you have good faith belief, you are still protected.

• The information a whistleblower brings to authorities is generally new information that would not otherwise be known if it wasn’t for this person bringing it to light.

• Some whistleblowers have also been a participant in the illegal or unethical practices and later decide to come forward.

A few warnings:

• Compliance departments, internal tip lines are designed to protect the interest of the company.  

• Internal tip lines will almost certainly result in retaliation and cover up attempts.  

• You should not make a disclosure to a company compliance officer or tip line without first consulting an attorney.

• There are some statutes of limitations, some as short as 30 days. So if you know your hospital is coding a visit that should be ‘F64’ visits as ‘general health maintenance’ visits in order for the state Medicaid to cover the visit you might want to move quickly.  

Pediatric gender medicine is a different industry then those historically seen with whistleblowers, we are in a new era. The National Whistleblower Center currently has ten priority campaigns listed: fossil fuel industry, industrial logging, banking and securities, money laundering, ocean shipping pollution, to name a few.

There is no national or international whistleblower organization that is currently assisting pediatric gender center whistleblowers, but there is assistance. We are forming our own support networks.

Pediatric gender medicine has many specific areas that potential whistleblowers should be aware of:       

• Federal/State Medicaid and Medicare billing practices and coding. There is a lot of pressure (by patients and families) in gender care regarding coding, often seeking to have codes changes in order for visits, labs, services to be covered.

• Consumer Protections. Informed consent, consent for treatment, signatures of the legal guardians for treatment, truth in billing and truth in explanations of risks and benefits.

• Practices that are ethically questionable, outside of hospital policies, outside of guidelines, outside of known good practice.

• Actual harms, adverse events, adverse reactions, poor medical outcomes, including ‘never events’

  • Never events are a special subset of medical harms that are considered the most serious, often the easiest example is having the wrong limb removed (which is why surgeons now write on your skin with the surgical pen marking the corrected versus the incorrect). I would consider the surgical removal of someone’s breast without proper diagnostic care ‘never event’ -this is not universally agreed upon- but I have seen devastating regret.

Each whistleblowers experience is unique. There are many that the public will never hear of. They might have filed their complaint with a government agency, and will never go public to the media. (I don’t judge anyone who chooses to stay behind the scenes, its challenging to be public).

Pediatric gender medicine is also creating an entirely new group of individuals, the canceled. These are individuals who are being canceled, pushed out, fired, and silenced for raising concerns within their professional organizations and workplaces. This can happen after just asking a question in a training. This is part of a wider cultural problem and one that can be solved.

Whistleblowers need legal protections, deserve legal protections, and are crucially important to expose wrongdoing around the world. If you believe that you might need whistleblower protections and have concerns from a pediatric gender center please reach out, LGBTcouragecoalition@gmail.com .

If you are simply a concerned citizen please assist in protecting whistleblowers and speaking out regarding their importance for everyone.

National Whistleblower Center Resources. Here

What happens if a whistleblower is wrong? Here