A longtime Bend doctor is closing his practice and suing St. Charles Health System, accusing it of forcing him out of business.
Dr. John Murphy’s lawsuit, which was filed in Deschutes County Circuit Court, alleges that the central Oregon hospital and clinic system tried to “sabotage” his practice by hiring away one of his colleagues. The lawsuit also claims that St. Charles discriminated against him by declining to hire him despite a previous understanding that it would do so.
St. Charles has not responded to the allegations in court, and a spokesperson for St. Charles declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Murphy and his attorney did not respond to an email and call from The Lund Report.
The lawsuit seeks more than $3 million in damages. In the meantime, Murphy is closing his practice, marking another “severe blow” to women in central Oregon, the lawsuit says.
With rural hospitals facing rising costs and declining income, many have closed their maternity wards. Women’s services in central Oregon have been particularly hard hit. St. Charles closed its birthing center in Redmond in 2019, and four years later, St. Alphonsus Medical Center closed its maternity ward in Baker City.
And in Bend, about a year after opening a women’s center with Murphy as the lead OB-GYN, St. Charles announced it would close the facility in 2016.
It has since reopened and hired one of Murphy’s former colleagues.
Longtime provider
State records show that Murphy has been a licensed physician for 25 years in Bend, where he opened his own practice in 2013.
The lawsuit states he is a “pillar” of the community and has delivered “thousands of babies and saved the lives of dozens of mothers” in Deschutes County. Bend Nest Parenting Magazine named him “Best OB” in its readers poll from 2018 through 2024.
Murphy’s association with St. Charles dates to 2015 when the health care system expanded its women’s health services by opening a women’s clinic in Bend. The nonprofit hired Murphy as the lead OB-GYN, touting his experience in an announcement published in The Lund Report.
“Dr. Murphy is a very skilled clinician and surgeon,” Barbara Newman, the clinic’s medical director, said in the announcement. “His experience and deep knowledge of the community are a welcomed addition to the St. Charles team of providers.”
But at the end of 2016, St. Charles said the center would close, citing short staffing. According to the lawsuit, Murphy made financial concessions in a “departure agreement” because he “was led by St. Charles’ legal counsel to believe” that, in exchange, he could be rehired by St. Charles if the center later reopened.
Women’s center reopens
Murphy returned to his practice, which also employed two other physicians, Dr. Aleksander Robles and Dr. Erin LeGrand. The lawsuit states that Robles left in 2023, the same year that St. Charles reopened the Bend women’s center.
The lawsuit says that in reopening the center, St. Charles “sought to consolidate local market share” in women’s services, including by trying to drive business away from Murphy’s practice.
There are a handful of women’s health care practices in Bend. The biggest, East Cascade Women’s Group, has 11 doctors, while nine currently work at St. Charles’ Center for Women’s Health.
The lawsuit states that company officials began soliciting LeGrand and that in late October, 2023, she accepted an offer to work at the women’s center.
In signing LeGrand, St. Charles deviated from its standard hiring practices, the lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit also states that St. Charles paid her a salary and bonus “far exceeding” the going rates in the area.
The lawsuit says that in hiring LeGrand that St. Charles’ sole aim was to kill his practice.
“Although in many circumstances the solicitation and movement of employees is desirable and healthy to competition, the unique circumstances of St. Charles’ solicitation of Dr. LeGrand demonstrate the opposite,” the lawsuit says.
Murphy realized that her departure would put him in the untenable position of being the sole physician in his practice, which meant being on-call around the clock with “an unmanageable workload, extreme stress and sleep deprivation,” according to the suit.
The complaint says that Murphy asked St. Charles to be rehired at the women’s center but that officials refused.
‘Beloved’ by patients
The lawsuit alleges that the rejection was not based on Murphy’s qualifications. It says he had previously been one of the most “productive” physicians at the center and that he continued to be “beloved” by patients and had a “stellar” professional reputation.
Rather, the lawsuit alleges that St. Charles refused to rehire him because he’s a man. It states that St. Charles management had decided the center should have “an exclusively female roster” of OB-GYNs.
“Because hiring Dr. Murphy would have compromised this status, St. Charles denied him employment,” the lawsuit says.
The 19 professionals listed by St. Charles as working at the center are all women, as are most of the OB-GYNs in Bend.
Though St. Charles declined to hire Murphy, it offered him part-time contract work but the lawsuit says the pay was a pittance and that the only reason for the offer was to “provide cover for its discriminatory refusal” to rehire him.
Murphy struggled to maintain his practice, the lawsuit says.
“Dr. Murphy was effectively on call all or nearly all of the time,” the lawsuit says. “Dr. Murphy became increasingly overworked, stressed and sleep deprived.”
The lawsuit says St. Charles agreed to let one of its midwives assist him with deliveries but only made her available 20% of the time. It alleges the agreement was part of a “scheme” by St. Charles to create the appearance “it was working to accommodate Dr. Murphy, while, in fact, it was intentionally sabotaging his practice.”
Murphy, who’s 60, is now closing his practice. The lawsuit claims he would have continued to practice another seven years, making $425,000 a year, “but for St. Charles’ conduct.”
The suit seeks a jury trial and $3.7 million in economic and noneconomic damages.
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Doctor Murphy was the most diabolical and manipulative OB in bend and he retired this year on a thick bed of cash from all of the unnecessary cesareans he was able to perform as a result of him sabotaging births for sport. There’s no coincidence ALL of my many friends who have had him as an OB all report “life-saving care” for an extreme rare condition that multiple of them had (against all odds!). He’s a con artist with a god-complex who sabotages and then gaslights you into thinking he saved your life. My personal worst and most violating and fear-mongering appointment of all time was with this clown. All the while he makes it his personal business to attack and make life as hard as possible for local traditional midwives who not only are extremely experienced, but outrank him by far in success and child/mother health outcomes. GOOD RIDDENS.