Word: bagnato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bagnato and Rehberg have got nothing but trouble for their efforts. Bagnato says he's being "shut out" from surgery business decisions at Phoebe and suspects the hospital of "politely but pointedly directing patients away from Albany Surgical and me in particular." Phoebe calls that claim abhorrent. But Bagnato is convinced, "If they could get away with firing me, I think they would." Rehberg, who filed counterclaims against Phoebe last week, now has the same security guard who protected Jeffrey Wigand. "Given a choice," Rehberg says, "I prefer to sit in back and observe. But I can't quietly tolerate...
Scruggs was vaguely aware of such problems but didn't have the basis for a case until a couple of whistle-blowers from Georgia contacted him last March. Dr. John Bagnato and Charles Rehberg, the administrator of Bagnato's private practice, had spent hundreds of hours probing hospital finances--particularly those of Phoebe Putney Memorial, a hospital in Albany, Ga., where Bagnato was chief of surgery. Bagnato's private practice, Albany Surgical, had tried to open an outpatient surgery center across the street from Phoebe, and eventually he and Rehberg suspected the hospital of meddling in state rules that...
...Bagnato and Rehberg say they are not on a vendetta against Phoebe, though their feud with the hospital took some ugly turns. Aiming to draw attention to what they felt were unscrupulous practices, they sent faxes to local politicians and businesses last fall and winter, including one that showed a cartoon of a fat "Phoebe Exec" puffing on a cigar, with a caption saying, IS THERE REALLY CORRUPTION AT PHOEBE? Around the same time, they say, their office at Albany Surgical was bugged. Rehberg's wife Wanda reports coming home one day and finding the door lock jammed...
...Georgians tried to enlist government authorities to their cause but failed. Then Bagnato called an old medical-school friend from Mississippi, David Merideth. Also a lawyer, Merideth suggested talking to Scruggs and asked Bagnato to write up his findings, at that point encompassing dozens of hospitals, in a letter. "I knew we were onto something really good when I gave Dickie the letter and he kept studying it," Merideth recalled. Scruggs was outraged by the accumulation of hospital wealth and seemingly abusive collection efforts. "He wouldn't give it back to me for a while," says Merideth. "When he finally...