The murder of Dr. George Tiller was rightly condemned by every reputable pro-life group in America including Live Action. Dr. Tiller has been hailed as a hero and martyr by the pro-choice community. He performed third trimester abortions on women who came to him from all over the country.
Tracey Jones was the former administrative director of Dr. Tiller’s clinic. She would later file suit against Tiller, claiming she was denied overtime wages for menial tasks she was instructed to do around the office. Her testimony was published in The Tiller Report, a publication by Operation Rescue which exposed disturbing practices at Dr. Tiller’s clinic.
Here are some of the things Jones’ alleged.
There were no training manuals for new employees, and there was no time (or instructions from Dr. Tiller) to develop them. Basically it was a “sink or swim”situation for new front office employees. We did have a cursory telephone answering procedure sheet to follow, but generally a new employee received on-the-job training by all of the front office employees.
A lack of training in office procedures makes things difficult for clinic employees and inconveniences patients. But more disturbing:
Further, front office employees were routinely called back to the medical area to assist medical employees with direct patient care without receiving any training in this area.
These office employees, with no medical background or training, were taking care of women who were receiving major surgery. Jones does not say exactly what medical procedures these employees were performing or assisting in, so we don’t know the extent of their potential to do harm. But one might imagine that if women knew they would be taken care of by untrained people, they may have felt differently about putting their health and safety in Dr. Tiller’s hands.
Dr. Tiller had a number of other doctors who referred patients to him. OBGYNs whose patients wanted abortions but were very far along would send their patients to Tiller. These doctors did not want to do late term abortions themselves but were willing to pass their patients on to someone who would. But Tiller apparently wanted to ensure that doctors would send their patients to him and not to other late term abortion practitioners. According to Jones, Tiller paid kickbacks to doctors who sent him patients.
Tiller paid kick-backs to certain individualswho referred patients to him….[I.S.] in New York; [C.F.] in Tulsa, Oklahoma and [C.K.] in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Tiller required me to account for these payments (other than[I.S.], who he paid in cash) as “Other Advertising” on the books.
Jones also says that she helped Tiller commit insurance fraud:
Dr. Tillerinstructed me to routinely overbill BlueCross/Blue Shield of Kansas. For example, we billed BC/BS $786 for a first trimester procedure, while patients actually paid only $225 or $330. Dr. Tiller advised me that he pioneered this billing procedure, and that other clinics across the country were doing it as well. The way it worked was that $786 was booked as the actual procedure fee, the patient paid either $225 or $330, and the remainder ($561 or $456) was written off in the “adjustments” column. When patients questioned this, we advised that $786 was the actual cost of our service, but that in order to remain competitive we took a loss, or a write-off, to keep our prices low.
Untrained employees caring for women, kickbacks and insurance fraud. One sad fact is that had the assassination of Dr. Tiller not taken place, his clinic may have been shut down legally by pro-life inspired legal action based on these and other accusations. In committing his crime, Scott Roeder not only made a mockery of the “pro-life” beliefs he claimed to hold, he created a hero and martyr in Tiller, who will now never have to answer to Jones’ (or anyone else’s) accusations.
