Daniel J. Dick

Introduction: When Certification Becomes Power Without Oversight

This article is part of the “Robbed in Plain Sight” series.
See the full series here: Robbed in Plain Sight!

Certification is supposed to protect quality, safety, and competence.
In healthcare IT, it carries even more weight. Lives, data integrity, and patient care depend on it.

But what happens when a private company controls certification, benefits financially from failure, changes rules midstream, and refuses to provide evidence for its decisions?

This article is not a legal brief.
It is a firsthand account of what happens when certification becomes unaccountable power—and how that power can quietly end a career.

What Certification Is Supposed to Be

In theory, certification exists to ensure:

• Fair evaluation based on published criteria
• Transparent scoring
• Good-faith training and remediation
• Accountability when disputes arise

When those conditions exist, certification earns trust.

When they don’t, certification becomes something else entirely.

The Stakes Behind Epic Certification

At the time I pursued Epic certification:

• Epic stood to lose $250,000 in Good Maintenance discounts if I passed
• Epic stood to lose a point of operational control over hospital management if I passed
• Epic reported certification outcomes directly to management
• Epic did not share scoring evidence with the test-taker

These facts matter because certification was not merely academic.
It carried financial, managerial, and professional consequences.

Pattern That Defied Reason

I had never failed a professional certification exam in my career.
Not once.

I had studied computer science and artificial intelligence at institutions such as Stanford and Caltech. I knew how to study, how to test, and how to verify answers against source material.

Epic said I failed the same exam five times.

Key details raise serious questions:

• I only supposedly failed the last exam out of six
• Epic changed the rules to limit the number of attempts
• I verified every answer against Epic’s own materials in my final attempts
• No scoring breakdown or evidence was ever provided
• Requests for accountability were consistently deflected

But if Epic placed my exams on a table and reviewed each question by question, I am confident the failing score could not be justified.

That review was never allowed.

When Questions Trigger Retaliation

I raised concerns:

• Verbally with Epic training staff
• In writing
• With my employer’s management

I asked for something simple: evidence.

The response was not clarification.
It was deflection, dismissal, and escalation.

Instead of transparency, the rules changed.
Instead of remediation, pressure increased.
Instead of accountability, silence followed.

Certification Without Evidence Is Not Certification

Epic charged hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars for its software and promised to support organizations through certification.

Cost was not a credible excuse.
Training capacity was not a credible excuse.
Time was not a credible excuse.

What was missing was accountability.

When the same entity:

• writes the exam
• scores the exam
• benefits financially from failure
• reports outcomes to management
• and refuses to provide evidence

there is no due process—only authority.

Why This Matters Beyond One Person

This is not about ego.
It is not about credentials.
It is not about pride.

It is about what happens when private vendors operate as de facto regulators without oversight.

When certification lacks transparency:

• Professionals lose careers
• Hospitals lose experienced staff
• Patients inherit systemic risk
• Power consolidates quietly

A system that cannot explain its decisions is not protecting quality.
It is protecting itself.

The Cost of Asking the Wrong Questions

Questioning this process did not result in answers.
It set the stage for retaliation, discipline, and eventual termination—covered in the next article in this series.

What began as a certification dispute became something much larger:

A demonstration of how unaccountable systems punish scrutiny.

A Question for the Reader

If certification can end a career without evidence,
and no external authority will review it,
who exactly is certification protecting?

Because it is not the public.
And it is not the professionals who serve it.

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Next in this series:

Punished for Questioning the System: Retaliation Inside a Healthcare Institution