A road trip, 400 hidden communications, and a new legal standard no employer wants to trigger
A Seattle hospital's secret talks with former employee doctors just cost it critical legal protections.
The Washington Supreme Court ruled on October 1, 2026, that Virginia Mason Medical Center broke state law by privately communicating with three former doctors involved in a patient's surgery - without his knowledge or consent - and partly forfeited its quality improvement committee privilege.
The patient had surgery at Virginia Mason in January 2018. A catheter was misplaced. When the team withdrew it, he suffered a massive hemorrhage, cardiac arrest, and permanent disabling injuries. He sued in March 2019.
He did not name the three doctors who assisted - two residents and a vascular surgeon. All three had already left.
That did not stop Virginia Mason from reaching out.
The hospital arranged separate counsel for the doctors. Its defense team, risk managers, and a third-party claims administrator all stayed in contact with them. A privilege log later listed more than 400 instances of communication.
Virginia Mason told the patient's lawyer the former doctors' knowledge was "more readily available to plaintiff's counsel than defense counsel" because it could not contact them. The court called that, at minimum, misleading - the hospital's own risk manager had already spent an hour on the phone with one of the doctors.
Then there was the road trip. The hospital's chief medical...
— Meanwhile, percentage with "very unfavorable" views of Health Secretary Kennedy is rising Most Americans don't agree with claims that vaccines cause autism, and half view Health Secretary Robert ...