Skip to main content
WHEN: July 26, 2024
WHAT: Notice of Disciplinary Action against Dr. Darrell Brett
Brett, the Lake Oswego neurosurgeon whose medical practice has repeatedly made headlines, is once again facing disciplinary sanction by the Oregon Medical Board. The accusation: He’s getting around a ban on charging for surgeries by fraudulently billing in a co-worker’s name.
THE BACKSTORY
In 2020, the board accused Brett of using a shell company to overcharge patients for urine tests. In one case, the board found, Brett charged $4,700 for a $400 test. (Brett has not responded to repeated requests for comment.)
To keep his license, Brett agreed to an extraordinary compromise: He’d stop charging for his services. WW recounted his actions and the penalty in a cover story earlier this year (“The $4,700 Pee Test,” Jan. 17).
WHAT’S NEW
Brett, the board alleges, found a loophole. Last summer, Brett performed spinal surgery on a 61-year-old man who is unnamed in board documents. The board worried the surgery was unnecessary. (The patient had “minimal symptoms,” it says.)
But that wasn’t the board’s only concern.
The man later received a bill, but not from Brett. It named a “junior partner” in Brett’s business, whom the patient had never seen.
Brett had told the patient the other surgeon had been invited to “assist in surgery in order to observe his technique,” the board says. But when the board investigated, they found the co-worker didn’t document anywhere that “he was serving as a surgical assistant and not a co-surgeon.”
Billing in the partner’s name, the board says, is unethical, and violates a prohibition on “making intentional misrepresentations to increase the level of payment.” Ultimately, the board says, it’s fraud.
The board doesn’t have many remaining ways to sanction Brett. He’s retired to his Lake Oswego mansion and can no longer practice medicine.
But the board can still fine him. He’s facing five different violations of state law, each of which comes with a possible $10,000 fine.
His attorney did not respond to WW’s request for comment.