Stand with a Surgeon Facing Retaliation

You may know me as the surgeon who posted a social media video in January of this year after being interrupted while performing breast reconstruction for a patient with breast cancer.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEid-1npNbA/?igsh=dWs5aGVtdGc3OHkw

I received a call from a United Healthcare representative requesting details regarding her diagnosis and justification for her overnight stay. In disbelief, I shared my thoughts and that post went viral. UNH then responded by sending me a threatening legal letter demanding that I apologize and delete the post. Their attempts to silence and bully me were not effective, and I shared their letter publicly.

The attention that followed shed light on the realities of healthcare, creating space for patients and providers to share their experiences. It also created other pressures that contributed to my current position of financial distress, leading me to create a gofundme campaign as a last resort pay down some of my debt.

As a reconstructive plastic surgeon in Austin, Texas with a practice primarily devoted to breast reconstruction, I have provided access to the most advanced surgeries, in network through insurance for over 12 years. I have been a safety net for patients across the country, accepting any insurance payment and not turning patients away due to poor reimbursement. I am one of the highest volume microsurgeons in the country and am known throughout the breast cancer patient community as a strong patient advocate with excellent outcomes. When insurance coding changes threatened access to the most complex and healthy types of natural tissue reconstruction in 2021, I personally took on the task and cost of reversing that change. Working in a broad coalition with patients and other advocates, we achieved a reversal of the coding change, insuring the best options remained accessible for the community.

While reimbursements for surgeries continued to decrease and many surgeons left private practice for employed positions with insurance companies, large groups, and hospitals, I remained in private practice where I was able to put patients over profits. In response to the preference of insurance companies to move cases into less expensive outpatient settings, I built my own surgery center to provide breast cancer and breast reconstruction surgeries in a specialized outpatient setting. I invested the remainder of my savings in the practice and personally guaranteed loans and took on additional debt totaling $4.8 million.

My surgery center opened in 2024 and passed all CMS and state certifications with flying colors. Since that time we have personally covered all of the ongoing costs of the surgery center. We hired consultants to facilitate contracts with all insurers and were in the process of navigating that throughout the fall and winter of 2024.

Around the time the post went viral, UNH stopped communication with my consultants, and have not allowed my surgery center to be in network. It is difficult for me to believe that this isn’t retaliation. It’s certainly not in the best interest of their members. By refusing to allow my center to be in network, UNH pressures me to either perform breast reconstruction surgeries in hospital facilities at a significantly higher cost, or to require their members to pay out of network facility penalties, or to ask insured patients affected by breast cancer to pay cash for their care. Their ongoing refusal to allow my surgery center to be in network is punishment for being a whistleblower.

UNH is the dominant healthcare company in the United States. By refusing to allow my surgery center to be in network, they damage my ability to run a profitable practice and pay back the money I borrowed and earn back what I have invested.

I have started a gofundme as a last resort to pay down some of my debt and avoid insolvency.

I am committed to the health of my patients and the practice, and I’m facing a new challenge. I have built a center where patients affected by breast cancer can receive the highest quality of personalized care in an outpatient setting. I have opportunities to evolve and grow, and I am confident that I can navigate what lies ahead with time. I’m also certain that I have more work to do in creating change in the system as a whole. I am not afraid of the work ahead, but I need help. I ask for your consideration in contributing both to the health of this practice and that of the broader healthcare community.