Jim’s story is familiar to many of the Allen Sunrise Rotarians because Jim had been a member of our club from 2001 to 2005 before he returned to Whitefish, Montana and La Quinta, California, where he now divides his time. Jim was also a member of SunCreek Methodist Church and so it was with great pleasure that he was able to present Pastor Kathleen Baskin-Ball with her Paul Harris Fellow today as one of the eleven Paul Harris Fellowship recipients. It was the sermon she preached on that first Sunday that Jim and his wife Connie visited SunCreek Methodist Church that solidified their decision to join that congregation during their residency here in Allen.

Mr. Alderson related his story to the club with the use of the CBS 60 Minutes program which originally brought Jim and his story to light for the whole world to see. It’s a story that began way back in 1990 when he discovered illegal accounting practices at the hospital for which he was CFO in Whitefish, Montana. He refused to go along with the scheme and was immediately fired. Jim pursued his investigations and discovered that this same scheme was being practiced in hospitals across the country. Jim persevered for almost thirteen years, much of that time in secret because he and his family could not tell anyone that he was a whistleblower involved in an accounting scandal of enormous proportions. Jim’s belief in the Rotary Four-Way Test of honesty and integrity supported his courageous stance and in the end his fight against one of the giants in health care changed the way hospitals do business nationwide and saved taxpayers billions.

When Jim was featured in The New York Times and on CBS’s 60 Minutes, it gave his case huge support and leant weight to its legitimacy. In the end, the government joined his case and in 2001 the two hospital giants, Quorum and HCA, who had spent over $300 million defending their practices, settled for $82.5 million. Mr. Alderson (along with the eleven law firms who had assisted him) received $70 million in settlement awards, while the government was awarded hundreds of millions. Best of all, Mr. Alderson and his family were able to come out from under the cloud of suspicion which had enveloped their lives and destroyed not only their very livelihood but any semblance of a normal life.