“Then you’re going to pay me more, because I’m doing more work.”
St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena paid its only oncologist more than $20.1 million from 2009 to 2020, on a formula that rewarded every billable unit. Thomas Weiner billed Medicare for 40,000 15-minute visits from 2013 to 2020, more than any other doctor in the country. Scot Warwick got 11 years of chemotherapy for a Stage 4 lung cancer that no biopsy ever confirmed. The hospital’s own consultant called the pay “a significant outlier” in 2019, and the RVU machine kept running anyway.