Dr. Greg Tierney, an orthopedic surgeon who served as a senior administrator of Benefis Health System for more than a decade, no longer works at the Great Falls hospital. While Benefis hasn’t publicly acknowledged the departure and didn’t respond to questions from Montana Free Press, the hos pital removed Tierney’s name and photograph from the senior leadership web page Tuesday. A Facebook post shared by family members said that Tuesday was his last day at Benefis. Colleagues and friends commented with praise and support for Tierney’s leadership over the years. The reason for his leaving Benefis isn’t publicly known. Reached Wednesday, Tierney declined to comment about his departure. Greg Tierney Credit: Courtesy of Benefis Health System Tierney specialized in orthopedic sports medicine. In his biographical page that was removed from Benefis’ website, he said that he enjoyed his specialty because, “Much in medicine requires managing problems — but orthopedists get the opportunity to resolve problems, which is a great satisfier to the patient and to the provider.” Tierney was president of a private medical practice, Great Falls Orthopedic Associates, in 2014, when it was acquired by Benefis. He became chief medical officer at the Great Falls health system, which has long been the region’s largest private employer. Most recently, he was the president of the hospital’s system clinical operations. Tierney’s tenure included a restructuring of Benefis’ nonprofit entities and the onset of COVID-19, during which hospitals navigated a difficult prohibition on vaccine mandates. “You have the people who have been vaccinated looking at the person next to him who’s choosing not to,” Tierney told KFF Health News in 2021. “Whereas, they were literally brethren in arms.” Amid the challenge of COVID, Benefis opened a major addition, the Women’s and Children’s Center, in 2021. In the mid-2010s, Tierney and some of his Benefis colleagues became embroiled in a scandal that occurred outside the hospital. In 2016, Tierney’s business partner, Ken Hatzenbeller, was charged with multiple counts of securities fraud and bank fraud. Investigators unraveled a complex scheme in which Hatzenbeller fraudulently solicited millions in private investments and bank loans for Shoot the Moon, Inc., a restaurant group with properties in Great Falls and other states.  The partners in Shoot the Moon were Hatzenbeller, Tierney and Dr. John Bloemendaal, who was a colleague from Great Falls Orthopedic Associates and at Benefis.  In 2017, Hatzenbeller was sentenced in both state and federal fraud cases. While a state investigator testified that she found “no facts” indicating that Tierney and Bloemendaal committed any crimes, the case presented evidence that the three partners had communicated about the troubled state of Shoot the Moon long before it filed for bankruptcy in 2015. Like his partners, Tierney filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. That proceeding put a stop to civil lawsuits filed by Shoot the Moon creditors and also halted one medical malpractice lawsuit against Tierney that had been ongoing since his days in private orthopedic practice.  Filings in his bankruptcy case showed that Tierney acted as guarantor for millions in loans to Shoot the Moon from Arizona-based Western Alliance Bank. The bank alleged in court filings that Tierney lied about his net worth, his ownership stake and the value of multiple assets in order to secure the loans. Tierney ended up paying $584,630 from more than $20 million in debts, according to court documents. He faced hundreds of claims arising from his business dealings with Shoot the Moon. Among his top claimants for repayment was Benefis CEO John Goodnow, Tierney’s now former boss, who was an investor in Shoot the Moon and claimed he was owed $582,158. Goodnow ended up receiving less than $3,400 in bankruptcy proceedings. The bankruptcy case was discharged in 2019. Tierney continued at Benefis, and his annual salary topped $1 million in 2024. In an interview with MTFP in May of this year, Tierney said that Benefis had been working to grow its portfolio of services both to improve patient care and to keep those patients within the Benefis system — a phenomenon Tierney called “halo revenue.” That’s what led the hospital to launch a specialty cardiology program called TAVR in 2022. An MTFP investigative report in June featured doctors who voiced concerns that some patients selected for TAVR weren’t necessary candidates. They said that Benefis administrators ignored those concerns. The report also revealed that Benefis was financially incentivized to perform more TAVR procedures to receive federal insurance reimbursement and remain competitive in a rural health care market.  The hospital paused the TAVR program at the end of 2025 but has said it intends to restart it this year. Benefis hasn’t responded to any inquiries from MTFP since the June story was published. The post Greg Tierney, senior administrator at Great Falls’ largest hospital, departs Benefis appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less