Menlo Park doctor awarded $1.5M in wrongful firing case

Thank you to Dr Weber for undertaking this lawsuit. The County talks a lot about “plans” for improving youth mental health services but little comes to fruition (while they hold back over $133 million funds given to the County specifically to be spent on mental health). It’s appalling.

Thank you, Dr Weber. You are certainly not alone. Several of my PAMF physicians have had similar problems with management concerned more with "efficiency" and the bottom line than with patient care. A few have joined other practices or been pushed out; others have taken early retirement. What do people do who can't afford concierge care?
I'm very glad Dr Weber's lawsuit succeeded. Others have not, and the doctors who filed them have been stuck with huge legal bills. Most individual doctors don't have pockets deep enough to risk appealing.
Patients need to speak up, and doctors need to band together to withstand the bullying tactics of medical management.

I could not be more pleased that Dr. Weber has been vindicated, but I'm wondering who is paying the award. As a taxpayer and a victim of shoddy care at Valley Med, I sure don't want to chip in. How about we make sure that the guilty administrators pay it?

This article confirms the heartbreaking and illegal disregard and apathy towards mentally and emotionally vulnerable children by our county leaders that has long been suspected...Lucille Packard does not welcome children with mental health needs, they are sent away. Another article in The Metro states that Dr. Weber also complained about Valley medical turning away a 14 year-old girl hearing voices instructing her to kill herself, and our juvenile detention center pepper spraying children, and medicating juvenile detainees without providing regular therapy or medical ovesite......
"Years before the county began reforming its correctional system in response to the 2015 murder of mentally ill inmate Michael Tyree by three deputies, Weber said he alerted them to problems with psychiatric care at the jails. Mentally ill inmates were being discharged with no plan for follow-up treatment, Weber said, leading to higher rates of relapse and recidivism.
Weber also warned county officials that being assigned to a juvenile detention facility only one day every other week was not enough, as federal law requires more frequent monitoring for youth on antidepressant medication"

If doctors did not have to live in fear of these monolithic institutions which have complete power of their careers and that want to control their every action and word I am sure we would hear almost nothing but complaints about their working conditions and many stories about how patients are underserved.

This is a difficult subject - mental health - and must be challenging work. And it is about necessary services. I am confused as a Palo Altan about hearing Stanford turns away youth with mental health issues - - including acute!? Some of us in the concerned public read a little bit about this, but there is every indication this is a major topic deserving much more attention to solve problems. We need government oversight and industry practices to make improvements and show concern. This is an important, complicated topic. Instead, often, Santa Clara County and the City of Palo Alto (for examples of two relevant local government entities with huge budgets) have elected leaders who choose to prioritize irrelevant topics or fad issues.