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A New York physician assistant is suing her former employer in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, claiming Rochester Regional Health defrauded the government by not allowing her to report adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines.
The lawsuit states that, under the False Claims Act, vaccine providers were legally obligated by their provider agreements to report adverse events arising from the COVID-19 vaccine to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — the U.S. government’s vaccine injury reporting and surveillance system.
Deborah Conrad, who filed the lawsuit, worked at United Memorial Medical Center, part of Rochester Regional Health, during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in December 2020. She immediately began seeing injuries in patients, she told the “Back to the People” podcast.
Conrad told podcast host Nicole Shanahan:
“Some of the worst side effects that we saw related to things like falls after they had a vaccine. They would pass out and fall, hit their head, develop brain bleeds, strokes, acute mental status changes, heart attacks, sudden heart failure. I mean, the list just goes on and on.”
At the time, Conrad knew nothing of the potential dangers of COVID-19 vaccines. She said:
“In our respective training, discussion of side effects to vaccines are just not something that’s even discussed. We are basically told they are safe and effective and to memorize the childhood vaccine schedule and that’s it. And so it’s ingrained in us from our training to never look at vaccines in any negative light.”
However, the injuries continued, and “the light started kind of coming in my head,” she said. Injured patients and their families blamed the injuries on the vaccine, saying the COVID-19 vaccine was the only change to their daily routine. “I believed my patients,” Conrad said.
Conrad had never heard of VAERS, but she knew the injuries should be reported.
After doing research online, she discovered that vaccination providers are required to report to VAERS any adverse reactions for COVID-19 vaccines given under an emergency use authorization.
So she taught herself how to report adverse effects. She said:
“I had never filed a VAERS report in my career, [or even] knew about it. … I’m embarrassed to say that, but really looking back on my training and again that whole mindset, I knew everything there is to know about side effects from drugs and what to do if a patient suffered an adverse reaction to a drug, but never to a vaccine.”
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‘Who’s in charge of this ridiculous monster?’
Conrad began filing reports for injured patients, but the reports were so time-consuming and cumbersome that it became an “overwhelming” task.
VAERS is “designed to be impossible to use … to deter you” from filing reports, she said. She added:
“When I first started filing, I gave [the system] the benefit of the doubt, right? But then I started saying to myself, you know, this is the modern age and this is pretty sad and embarrassing that our government system is this clunky, right? Like, who’s in charge of this ridiculous monster? …
“We want to do our job, but it’s almost as if it’s purposely designed so that we don’t give them the information and we just give up.”
Conrad started asking for help within the hospital. But as word spread that she had filed dozens of reports, the hospital accused her of “being an anti-vaxxer” and “spreading vaccine misinformation.”
She was fired in October 2021. By then, she had filed “about 180 or so” VAERS reports.
She said:
“We need a whole new overhaul of this system. It’s embarrassing. We are the United States of America and we should have the best healthcare and we should put the safety of our citizens first. And if this system is broken, we need to fix it. It’s a long time coming in my opinion because there’s lots of healthcare workers like myself who have woken up, right?”
Conrad’s legal case is ongoing.
On June 11, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York denied the hospital’s motion to dismiss the case. The court found that the hospital was obligated to report serious adverse events to VAERS, and failure to report while continuing to seek federal reimbursement was potential fraud against the government.
Watch ‘Back to the People’ here:
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