By: Katie Campbell and Diana Opong
April 3, 2025
An unsettling tension hung in the air as “a big man” entered the patient’s exam room instead of a female doctor she’d seen before.
“Patient A,” as she’s identified in court documents, was at the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Reproductive Health that day in 2009 to artificially conceive her second child. She had envisioned a future in which her children shared the same biological father — a sperm donor she had carefully selected for her first child based on his genetic profile.
But more than a decade later, with the help of 23andMe’s genetic relatives database and a private investigator, Patient A found evidence of something that shattered her world: Dr. Christopher Herndon, the "big man" who had inseminated her in 2009, had allegedly done so with his own sperm, a crime in California since the 1990s — and only since 2024 in Washington — known as fertility fraud.
The revelation “shocked” her, Patient A later wrote. Horrified by the possibility there could be other victims, she contacted the Washington State Medical Commission, the regulatory authority that oversees doctors in Washington, after learning Herndon had relocated and was still seeing patients like her — women who sought his help to get pregnant.
“I worry for the safety of his female patients — his actions have completely eliminated their reproductive choice,” she wrote in her initial complaint to the commission in April 2023. “I am greatly concerned he continues to practice in the reproductive health field.”
Herndon voluntarily surrendered his medical license seven months later — but not before continuing to see unsuspecting patients under his care at the University of Washington’s Center for Reproductive Health and Fertility, which says it was unaware of Patient A’s complaint, while he was under investigation. Herndon saw about 2,600 patients during his career at the UW clinic from 2017 to 2023.
The case against Herndon sparked widespread outrage among his former patients over what they saw as a lack of transparency during the commission’s investigation. They wanted to know why he was allowed uninterrupted access to women under the clinic’s care.
Herndon did not respond to KUOW’s request for comment on this story. However, through a written statement provided by his lawyer, Herndon told KUOW in January 2024 he had “discharged his medical duties in the state of Washington with excellence and the highest standards of professionalism in all aspects of medical care and management.”
KUOW reviewed hundreds of pages of Washington Medical Commission documents and state legal codes and found a tension the agency faces: balancing a doctor’s right to due process with a patient’s desire for more information about the people they trust with their health care.
That balancing act is part of a national pattern of state medical boards only publicly revealing serious allegations against doctors if and when formal disciplinary action is taken, leaving patients in the dark about providers they may have otherwise decided not to see.
The state provides guidelines for authorities like the Washington Medical Commission about how much of a doctor’s disciplinary history must be shared with the public. While the commission publishes formal disciplinary outcomes online, it doesn’t publish information about open investigations or complaints that weren’t officially investigated.
However, Washington Medical Commission Executive Director Kyle Karinen said people can file public records requests for that information.
For instance, had one of Herndon’s patients called the commission to ask whether complaints had been filed against him, they would have been directed to file a public records request with the state Department of Health.
But there are some exceptions, Karinen said.
When companies that handle credentialing for hospitals reach out, the commission will “send them just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’” about whether a doctor was currently under investigation, Karinen explained. “At that point, if they want anything more, then they must go to the public records office.”
State law also allows the commission to use professional discretion in taking disciplinary action. For example, the commission can decide to keep a doctor from practicing pending the final outcome of an investigation, an action known as a summary suspension.
But issuing a summary suspension isn’t an instantaneous process: State law requires the commission to first show a doctor “poses an immediate threat to the public health and safety” during the course of a complaint investigation. That process can take up to 170 days, during which a physician may continue seeing patients.
If the commission does not take summary action, adjudication for a complaint investigation could take an additional 140 days.
Summary action was not taken in Herndon’s case, in part because the complaint had not alleged misconduct in Washington state; Patient A was a resident of California. Additionally, fertility fraud was not a crime in Washington state at the time of the alleged offense, nor at the time Patient A filed a complaint with the commission.
But according to Karinen, the question of whether to take summary action against Herndon was moot by the time the commission completed its investigation on Sept. 11, 2023. Herndon had resigned from UW Medicine on Sept. 4, though he never admitted to any wrongdoing. And on Sept. 27, Herndon told the commission he wanted to voluntarily surrender his Washington medical license.
Herndon’s surrender was accepted by the commission on Nov. 29, 229 days after the agency authorized an investigation.
“There's no [limit to the] sympathy that you can have for patients who were in that quandary, after they learned that Dr. Herndon had surrendered his license and had been treated by him in the past,” Karinen said. “It's hard as a human being not to empathize with the pain and certainly the anxiety that they suffered.”
UW Medicine Spokesperson Susan Gregg told KUOW the institution was not aware that Herndon was being investigated by the commission prior to his resignation.
“UW Medicine is not notified by the Washington Medical Commission when it receives a complaint about a clinician whom we credential,” she said. “Sometimes the clinician will notify us [of a complaint], but this is not required.”
The Washington Medical Commission is made up of 21 governor-appointed members, including 13 physicians, two physician assistants, and six public members. While the commission’s makeup is aimed at providing balance in decision-making, that doesn’t always align with perceptions of the agency.
“The common refrain we hear — and it's anecdotal, we've never done any sort of research into it — is that the commission protects docs, and that's mostly on the public side,” Karinen said. “Then on the doc side, we hear that the commission is too rigorous or too strict, and that we're taking docs out of practice without cause."
From his perspective, neither refrain is “particularly accurate.” But because of the nature of the work — with patient safety on the line — Karinen said the commission is concerned about that perception, which “can have a substantive effect on what we're trying to do,” he said.
The public’s perception, in part, stems from what action commissioners decide to take, if any, against a physician. That can range from requiring a doctor to enroll in professional training or write a reflective essay, to more serious but uncommon measures such as revoking one’s medical license.
Karinen said the commission prioritizes cases involving sexual misconduct allegations.
“Sexual misconduct by physicians or [physician assistants] represents a really fundamental transgression against patients, against individuals of any sort,” he said.
In 2022, one physician’s license was revoked after the commission determined he’d “used his position of power and trust to engage in sexual boundaries violations that compromised the patient-provider relationship on numerous occasions.” The doctor was also accused of providing substandard care and using or disclosing protected health information without authorization.
Commissioners determined he “could not be rehabilitated,” and revoked his credentials.
The commission may also temporarily restrict a physician’s license if they pose “an imminent threat to public safety.” Imminent threats may include cases involving criminal convictions or significant malpractice.
For example, in June 2024, one doctor’s license was restricted, pending further disciplinary proceedings, after he allegedly “failed to appropriately treat pregnant patients and newborn infants in sixteen separate instances.” That doctor was prohibited from practicing obstetrics and newborn care while his license was restricted.
Some cases are more unusual than others.
For example, in 2021, a doctor self-reported that he’d had sexual relationships with about 10 patients from 1998 to 2000. None of his patients had filed complaints against him, according to the commission. The agency ordered him to complete “an intensive boundaries course,” write “a scholarly paper on maintaining appropriate boundaries with patients,” and offer “a disclosure to patients regarding these sanctions and their duration.”
Then there are cases like Herndon’s, which Karinen described as a “very odd set of circumstances.” While fertility fraud was illegal in California at the time Herndon treated Patient A, it didn’t become a crime in Washington until four months after he’d surrendered his medical license.
At least one patient filed another complaint with the commission after Herndon was no longer practicing. But because Herndon was no longer licensed to practice in Washington, Karinen said there was nothing the agency could do.
“It was important to me that the patients who still wanted to be heard and still took the time to file a complaint, I called and talked to them on the phone,” he said. “I said, ‘Listen, we're not authorizing these investigations. It doesn't mean what you've alleged didn't happen.’ …But in talking to them, you could still feel the pain and really the anxiety over what happened.”
Karinen said he was “profoundly” affected by those conversations. And he acknowledged patients may not have gotten the closure they were looking for in the end.
“This process sometimes takes longer than people like, and I understand that. We work every day to make sure that we do things as efficiently and with quality results in mind,” he said.
At least one significant change came out of the Herndon case: Washington state lawmakers approved legislation to make fertility fraud a felony, specifically a form of third-degree criminal assault that could require violators to surrender their medical licenses. Offenders could also face up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines.
The law was sponsored by Rep. Tina Orwall (D-Des Moines), who described the change in 2024 as “long overdue justice for people who have been so deeply harmed by their health care provider.”
But Herndon’s former patients who spoke to KUOW raised questions that went beyond whether he’d committed a crime in Washington. In fact, some of their concerns had also been raised by the Office of the Washington State Auditor.
The most recent state audit of the commission, released in March 2023, concluded that the commission needed “to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the disciplinary process,” pointing in part to the commission only investigating one-third of the complaints it receives.
Auditors made nine recommendations, including that the commission restructure its staffing to better delegate decision-making, implement “alternative technological methods” to improve its operations, and create an ombudsman’s office. They also suggested that commission leaders work with state legislators to update laws surrounding doctor background checks, as well as create a pathway for issuing “a confidential letter of concern for cases that do not meet the legal threshold for sanction but warrant a state response.”
Karinen said the commission currently has “six or seven different people” tasked with speaking to the public, but is trying to streamline that communication.
“One of the concerns… that the State Auditor's Office had told us about is that sometimes it feels like your system isn't necessarily super friendly to complainants, whether they're patients or whether they're a third-party complainant,” Karinen said. “So, we've asked for the authorization to spend some of the commission's reserves and hire an ombudsperson.”
The issue of communicating with the public, especially when they need to file a complaint against a physician, is a matter of national concern, too.
A 2018 survey conducted by the nonprofit Federation of State Medical Boards, which provides guidance to agencies like the commission and licensing and disciplinary information about doctors, found that 51% of Americans aren’t even aware of their state medical boards or their function; 24% of those surveyed incorrectly believed the responsibility of licensing and regulating physicians belonged to the American Medical Association.
“Most consumers don't know that a medical board would be the place to file a complaint,” the federation’s Chief Advocacy Officer Lisa Robin said. “They would not know how to do it, and more than half [of respondents] don't know that medical boards regulate the practice of medicine.”
To that end, Robin said the federation is currently working on a national public awareness campaign to bridge that “gap with the public.”
“What you have is a lack of understanding [from the public],” she said. “There are allegations, and then there'll be an investigation. That information is not public until… it actually moves on into being adjudicated.”
Robin also emphasized that state medical boards rely on the public to help hold doctors accountable.
“We've tried to raise awareness about duty to report things to the boards, but I think that that is just the reality that we are in,” she said, “that there is a need for public awareness, for people like you to let consumers know that there is a role for them.”
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Story: Katie Campbell and Diana Opong
Design: Teo Popescu
Editor: Liz Brazile
Product Manager: Lisa Wang
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