A radiologist at Northwest Permanente, P.C. has filed a lawsuit saying he’s faced nearly two years of continuing retaliation and mistreatment after blowing the whistle on two Portland radiologist coworkers for alleged “fraud.”
One of those doctors now faces proposed discipline by the Oregon Medical Board and the other surrendered her license and agreed to pay a $10,000 fine. Both of them, Joseph Shen and Dorothy Pao, declined to comment when contacted by The Lund Report.
The 33-page suit, filed by attorney Larry Linder against the medical group, tells the story of Daniel “Layne” Tarbox in excruciating detail. When the Salem physician raised concerns, the suit says, Tarbox’s managers responded with intimidation, “retaliation, resistance and cover-up” after he shared concern and evidence that one radiologist, Pao, was apparently not showing up for work while her spouse, Shen, appeared to be using her sign-in credentials to do her work for her.
In April, according to Oregon Medical Board documents, Pao agreed to surrender her license pending an investigation into allegations of unprofessional conduct and obtaining a fee by “fraud and misrepresentation.” In September, the board issued a notice of proposed discipline to Shen based on investigative findings that echoed Tarbox’s allegations.
According to the notice, Shen between March and November 2022 had been signing into an electronic medical records system with another doctor’s credentials, reading images under their name, signing the imaging reports with their name. By “submitting those falsified imaging reports for patient billing, Licensee engaged in unprofessional or dishonorable conduct because he did not conduct himself as an honest, reliable professional and made an intentional misrepresentation to increase the level of pay he received.”
Northwest Permanente, which is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente, describes itself as the “largest medical group in Oregon and Southwest Washington,” employing more than 1,300 doctors and serving two hospitals and 73 medical and dental offices.
Asked for comment, the group issued a statement saying it cooperates with medical board inquiries, adding, “We highly value our employees and physicians, and we are committed to keeping them safe in the workplace. This includes protecting them from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. We strongly dispute the claims in this case and will vigorously defend ourselves.”
Tarbox went to work for Northwest in July 2013. In 2022, he said, a coworker who’d relocated to join him at the Salem office told him about the alleged practice in Portland and that another doctor had told management to no avail.
Tarbox contacted Shen and conducted research to determine whether there was a basis for the claim, confirming the claim that another doctor had raised the concerns with management but, as she put it, “it didn’t go well,” according to the suit. That, he said, caused him concern that the company was “violating the law, placing the radiology department and patients at risk, and actively covering up evidence.”
He also shared evidence that another radiologist had stopped doing his job, according to the suit.
He shared the evidence with managers and executive committee members of the group and faced a repeated pattern of people, including a company attorney, urging him to not share his concerns outside the group. He said he faced “pressure and threats.”
On Nov. 10, 2022, Tarbox alleged, he received a call from Teran Colen, who told Tarbox he was about to be named chief of radiology. According to the suit, “Colen pressured and intimidated Plaintiff in an effort to stop him from making a disclosure” to the company board, indicating “that it might not be good for” Tarbox if he took his concerns to higher ups.
Shen and Pao resigned in November 2022 after Tarbox took his concerns to the executive committee and an outside “fraud line,” according to the suit. But a few days later, after Tarbox shared his concerns about pressure and threats a top director of operations, Eric Poolman, replied praising the “courageous leadership” of Colen — one of the people who Tarbox felt had threatened him.
Tarbox said the treatment he faced was contrary to the company’s “emphasizing and advertising a ‘speak up’ culture that invites reporting concerns, prompt investigations, and antiretaliation.”
A company investigator later told him that in light of his allegations about retaliation, “it appeared as though they needed to investigate a lot more employees.”
However, he was not interviewed or asked to provide evidence despite the investigator’s promise to follow up, according to the suit.
Later, Poolman told Tarbox that the retaliation investigation would not happen, indicating that “so many people were involved that they needed to be shown grace.”
Starting in early 2023 Tarbox reported what he considered to be retaliation by Colen and that the supervisor was working to “ostracize” the whistleblower.
His continued complaints were not investigated for months. In January 2024 he was told complaints made in November 2022 would be investigated, accordig to the suit. An investigator told him that she’d previously been told not to investigate those complaints at the time.
Later he learned that Pao and Shen were continuing to provide work for the medical group through a contractor. Colen told him it was OK to follow up, but when he did a top official “threatened him with litigation,” according to the suit.
His continued concerns were met with dismissal and further pressure, according to the suit. The head of a physician support group told Tarbox “if he pursued his claims he would be marginalized and not be able to continue in his career.”
Starting in July his hours were extended and his schedule disrupted to include two shifts in a day, according to the suit. But internally, he was told not to raise concerns with upper management.
In early October, he reached out to an internal Northwest Permanente mental health crisis line, and a worker warned him that management could use the call to terminate him. She discouraged him from pursuing his claims, saying the company would “grind (him) down.”