Two legal filings in less than a month detail additional allegations of departmental misconduct and employee mistreatment under Dr. Rick Wright, an orthopedic surgeon and top executive at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
While serving atop VUMC’s orthopedics department, Wright was named chief medical officer and senior vice president for clinical affairs last summer. Orthopedic surgeons Ginger Holt and Christen Hoedt, who has since left VUMC, as well as Wright’s executive assistant Lucille Mongogna, have all filed reports detailing professional misconduct by Wright.
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The first — filed March 15 by Hoedt — alleges that Wright, along with fellow orthopedic surgeon Greg Polkowski, blackballed Hoedt for refusing to use certain joint replacement devices that potentially financially benefited Polkowski. In subsequent months, Wright, who then headed VUMC’s orthopedic surgery department, helped orchestrate negative performance reviews and disciplinary measures designed to force Hoedt out of his position, according to legal documents. Hoedt, who now works in North Carolina, alleges in the lawsuit that retaliation by Wright and Polkowski jeopardized his medical career.
Mongogna filed additional allegations against her boss on April 10. In a sworn statement, Mongogna claims that Wright verbally abused her, discriminated against female employees and physically intimidated her.
“Almost immediately after I started I observed Dr. Wright throwing open doors, slamming them shut, screaming and berating all the female staff,” Mongogna’s affidavit reads. “Dr. Write would also aggressively gesticulate while yelling at me while I was cornered at my desk, causing significant fear.”
Mongogna also claims that Wright “placed $500 in my desk in an envelope” after she contacted a superior administrator and VUMC human resources about her boss’s behavior. Her statement was filed in support of the ongoing lawsuit brought by Holt, an orthopedic oncologist, against Wright.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
