BELLINGHAM, Wash. — The Chief Operating Officer of Peacehealth says they had no choice but to remove an emergency room physician who claimed Bellingham’s hospital wasn’t prepared to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.
Richard DeCarlo told the host of a YouTube video blog that’s popular with medical professionals that Dr. Ming Lin was frightening people without reason.
“He continued to post misinformation which was resulting in people being afraid and being scared to come to the hospital and that is what had us so concerned because it wasn’t true what he was posting and it wasn’t a scary place to go. We were ramping up quickly with our preparedness work doing what we needed to do. However he wasn’t feeling that or seeing that and I don’t know why.”
DeCarlo told “ZDoggMD” host Dr. Zubin Damania that Lin withdrew from the leadership in the emergency department and they became worried that he didn’t feel safe working in that environment.
And he takes issue with Dr. Lin’s claims about a lack of preparedness or sense of urgency.
DeCarlo later told the Seattle Times that he couldn’t provide any evidence that patients stayed away from St. Joseph Medical Center because of Lin’s claims, but that they made that determination based on comments to his social media posts.