CAMAS — A state medical commission charged with ensuring physicians and physician assistants provide quality health care to Washingtonians has received more than a dozen complaints involving a Washougal pediatric health care provider who has railed against distance-learning and students wearing masks inside schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stephanie Mason, the public information officer for the Washington Medical Commission, told the Post-Record the commission has received 13 complaints against Scott Miller, a physician assistant who runs Miller Family Pediatrics in Washougal.
Of those complaints, seven are “currently under investigation.” One is undergoing a legal review, and two are still in the “complaint intake” stage, Mason said.
Although Mason was unable to provide details of the individual complaints, she said the commission “is aware, interested and listening to the community concerns expressed in the complaints.”
Miller, who moved to the Camas-Washougal area in 2014 and established a popular pediatric practice in Washougal in 2017, has become a vocal critic of several public health measures meant to curb the spread of COVID-19.
The complaints lodged with the commission are not the first to target Miller’s controversial stance on internationally accepted COVID-19 precautions.
On Nov. 23, 2020, an anonymous complaint came into the state’s COVID-19 violations center, reporting Miller for promoting anti-mask rhetoric on social media sites.
Miller was “gloating about how Miller Family Pediatrics … doesn’t use masks” and said he “has to ‘teach’ clients about how worthless masks are,” the complainant stated. “He talked about the stupidity of people taking the pandemic seriously” … “then shared a barrage of antiquated or false information regarding COVID.”
Around the same time, Miller was promoting unproven COVID-19 remedies, including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin — neither of which are approved by the Federal Drug Administration as treatment for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
In October 2020, Miller was featured in an article and video posted on Clark County Today, a media site owned by former Clark County Councilor David Madore, touting the drugs’ purported benefits.
A few months later, on May 10, Miller attended an in-person Camas School Board meeting, where he refused to follow the board’s policy regarding face coverings and again promoted ivermectin and vitamin therapy to treat COVID-19, calling the unproven remedies “a cure” for the coronavirus.
Miller has hundreds of loyal patients in the Camas-Washougal area who have been speaking out — and opening their wallets — in his support.
A Camas resident named Joshua Brock recently started an online crowd-sourcing GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Miller’s legal fund in the face of the Washington Medical Commission complaints.
On the GoFundMe page, Brock describes Miller as a health care practitioner many parents turn to after striking out with other providers.
“He is known to readily find answers to difficult childhood health issues that other pediatricians are either stumped by or brush off as something that will pass,” Brock wrote about Miller. “Scott is sought out by parents who have tried multiple physicians, therapists and practitioners without success. In so many cases, Scott is able to find solutions for these children and their distraught parents.”
As of Aug. 16, the GoFundMe page for Miller’s legal defense bills had been shared more than 1,400 times and 164 people had donated $29,825, with many people donating $200 or more.
Miller was not able to answer the Post-Record’s requests for comment before the paper’s print deadline.
