Brownstone Pittsboro, NC Supper Club, April 21: Drs. Patricia Robitaille and Coleen Rickabaugh

Brownstone Institute Supper Club, Pittsboro, NC

Forest Hall at Chatham Mills

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 @ 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Dr. Patricia Robitaille and Dr. Coleen Rickabaugh

About the talk

Join us as we build our community around lively and in-depth discussions about topics that matter to all of us!  Dr. Patricia Robitaille and Dr. Coleen Rickabaugh, from Ohio and the DC area respectively, are travelling the country to discuss the critical reforms needed to the Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) of 1986, a federal law originally intended to address medical malpractice and improve patient care. However, HCQIA is now often weaponized through sham peer reviews which silence ethical physicians who challenge profit-driven practices or administrative overreach. The doctors have recently appeared on podcasts, including DemystifySci and a Substack interview by Jefferey Jaxen, and are scheduled for the March Chicago Brownstone Institute Supper Club. They will outline the original intent of HCQIA, how the misapplication of this federal law controls physicians and negatively affects patient care, in addition to proposed legislative amendments aimed at removing hospital immunity, restoring due process, protecting whistleblowers, and prioritizing patient safety over institutional control. Their insights, formed by decades of frontline experience in emergency medicine, emphasize the urgent need to rewrite this flawed legislation and to rebuild trust and integrity in the medical system.

About the Speakers

Dr. Patricia Robitaille is an emergency physician with 35 years of experience in emergency medicine and 20 years of involvement in physician peer review and credentialing. As chairman, she unified three credentialing committees from four hospitals, to form a centralized, system wide Medical Staff Credentialing Committee which was responsible for the evaluation of thousands of physicians. She has extensive experience as an emergency department chairman and head of human resources for her practice group. She has dedicated her clinical career to putting patients first. Having personally witnessed ethically concerning issues in healthcare arising from the corporatization of medicine, particularly the misapplication of the federal Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986, she is dedicated to reforming this law. She has sought to educate the public and healthcare professionals about these issues through her Substack and is collaborating on legislative efforts to reform HCQIA.

Dr. Coleen Rickabaugh has 30 years of experience practicing emergency medicine. She served as the recruiter for their department and has been the volunteer medical director for emergency medical services, directing pre-hospital care in Spotsylvania County Virginia. While her allopathic training had prepared her to treat true emergencies, she quickly realized that many patients who presented to the emergency department were in desperate need of primary care. Having a holistic slant and a “whole person” philosophy of medicine, she incorporated that into her practice model, frequently educating patients about the dangers of over-reliance on pharmaceutical agents and coaching them on issues of immune health, food as medicine, and the importance of physical activity. She became increasingly disillusioned by the administrative usurpation of medicine, the abandonment of ethics, the substitution of protocol medicine for critical thinking, and the lack of accessibility to proper care for many patients. These concerns peaked during the Covid pandemic. She became a Covid dissident and formed an underground alliance with one like-minded family practitioner in the community to treat patients early with immune support and assist them in navigating inpatient care with medical autonomy and informed consent. Having experienced moral injury, she left clinical medicine to embark on healthcare advocacy issues, partnering with Dr. Patricia Robitaille on a mission to reform the Health Care Quality Improvement Act that is failing as a patient safety mechanism and eroding the physician-patient relationship which is so vital for the optimization of patient health.

Venue & Details

Forest Hall at Chatham Mills, 480 Hillsboro Street, Suite 530, Pittsboro, NC

Forest Hall is located in a historic label mill built in the early 1900s, the venue has wooden floors, exposed brick walls and large windows. The 3500 square foot hall is located on 32 acres of woods and meadows in historic downtown Pittsboro, NC- just 20 minutes away from Chapel Hill and 40 minutes from Raleigh or Durham.  Catering is provided by 39 West Catering. 

Ticket Information 

$55 per person includes a lovely buffet style dinner, beer, and wine.  Secure your spot now!