Oversight board narrows inquiry into Maine surgeon

The Maine board that oversees doctors decided on Tuesday to dismiss four of 15 counts of misconduct against a surgeon from MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta but continued to hear from witnesses that the surgeon repeatedly acted inappropriately in the workplace over several years.

The Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine heard testimony during its hearing in Augusta from a former vascular surgeon at MaineGeneral who said he had brought forward concerns from his female colleagues about the general surgeon, Dr. Ian Reight, but that his superiors at the hospital appeared to downplay them. The witness said he directly heard Reight make many concerning statements about colleagues and emphasized that they should be viewed as a pattern.

In the second day of the adjudicatory hearing, the licensing board dismissed four counts against Reight that had centered on his lack of patient care. Most of the remaining 11 counts center on allegations that he bullied people in his workplace, made inappropriate statements and sexually harassed women. One also asserts that he failed to disclose his use of marijuana on his application to renew his medical license.

Reight was also the subject of an investigation by the Bangor Daily News in 2022 that found he rose to a leadership position — eventually becoming president of medical staff, which earned him a spot on the board of the central Maine hospital system — despite at least five women submitting complaints about him to hospital officials and while MaineGeneral’s website stated he had certifications he actually did not.

Under questioning at the first day of his hearing last month, Reight denied ever berating or discriminating against anyone, or he could not remember specific examples. The hearing is spread out over individual days each month. The next hearing date is in September.

While the licensing board typically waits until all testimony concludes to decide whether a doctor has violated any laws or rules, it opted to vote on Tuesday on the four patient-specific counts because it had finished hearing evidence from the state on them and said it didn’t need to keep hearing Reight’s defense on them.

One of the allegations centered on a patient who was in the hospital for 49 days in 2020 following a significant complication of her surgery that Reight had performed. He never checked on her during her readmission, according to the complaint to the licensing board. He also didn’t sign the patient’s operative note until she had been readmitted more than a month after her original surgery.

Dr. Brad Waddell, a member of the licensing board who is a surgeon with Northern Light Health, said the patient care-specific allegations didn’t appear to demonstrate gross negligence. While Waddell didn’t agree with what Reight did, he said there is a difference between optimal care and what happens in real life.

“I don’t think Dr. Reight went across the line,” Waddell said.

The licensing board’s hearing is similar to a civil trial in that evidence, witnesses and arguments are presented by both sides. The board, which is mostly made up of doctors, will ultimately decide whether Reight committed any violations and, if so, what sanctions to hand down.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Wilson is arguing the state’s case against Reight. Reight is being represented by Robinson and Cole LLP attorneys Seth Orkand and Kathleen Healy, who are based in Boston.

On Tuesday, the licensing board heard from Dr. John Carson, a former vascular surgeon at MaineGeneral from 2017 to 2023 who led the vascular division and frequently worked with Reight. Carson described one instance when a female doctor broke down in tears in front of him, telling him he had no idea what it was like to work for Reight. She said he held meetings in the locker room and disrespected women, causing some to quit, Carson testified.

Carson helped the doctor bring her concerns to the former medical director for the surgery department, Dr. Carlo Gammaitoni, who conducted an investigation by talking to more employees before taking his findings to human resources, Carson said. People raised concerns to Gammaitoni about Reight’s alleged use of marijuana, sexual harassment, bullying and the fact that MaineGeneral’s website said Reight was board certified in surgical critical care and general surgery when he was not, Carson testified.

Carson then went with Gammaitoni to meet with Jennie Savage in human resources about what employees had said. Savage immediately said Reight should be put on administrative leave until the situation could be sorted out, Carson testified. In the meeting, however, she called Dr. Andrew Dionne, the chief medical officer for the hospital, who disagreed and told her not to do anything until the following week.

After that, Carson said the concerns were not fully addressed.

“It just led down a path of emails and meetings, and ‘we need to all get along’ and ‘we’re being overly sensitive’ and so on and so forth,” he said.

One complaint about Reight to the licensing board states that he was absent from the wound healing and hyperbaric oxygen therapy clinic when he was its medical director. Last month, Reight testified that was true but said the providers at the clinic did fine without him.

Carson disagreed on Tuesday, saying the clinic needed oversight and got none. For instance, Carson said he wanted vascular surgeons to be more involved in the clinic to prevent certain medical conditions from worsening. Instead, patients were sometimes referred to him too late and needed to have their limbs amputated.

Reight was not just absent from the wound clinic but was often unreachable in general, Carson testified.

“He was unavailable. That’s a well-known fact. You could speak to ER physicians. He would not return pages from nurses. We couldn’t get a hold of him,” he said.

Other complaints to the licensing board focused on unprofessional statements Reight made, often in front of other people. In one instance, Carson said he heard Reight call a patient, who was also a hospital employee, a “fat sow.”

Carson said he also heard Reight talk disparagingly about a female surgeon by saying, “I don’t gender discriminate. We just hate her. We aren’t nice to her because we cannot stand her and can’t stand being in a room with her. She’s awful.”

“This was in the middle of a clinic in front of 20-year-old medical assistants, and patients’ rooms were right around the corner,” Carson testified.

Carson also said he heard Reight insinuate a female doctor was promiscuous by stating, “She has more stuff stuck in her than a porcupine has sticking out.”

An attorney for Reight, Orkand, pressed Carson to remember what else Carson and Reight had been talking about when Reight made the porcupine comment, and what date it happened, but Carson said he didn’t recall.

“I think the fact that I’m telling you that he said this should be a jaw dropper,” he said.

He had never experienced anything like the situation with Reight in his approximately 17 years of being a physician in leadership, he said, adding how it was baffling that it still hadn’t been resolved.

The licensing board also heard from a former surgical technologist who began working at MaineGeneral in 2011 and later became a nurse. She testified that she had intended to have a career at MaineGeneral but left full-time work there in 2018 because of the way Reight demeaned and insulted her in front of others.

In one of three instances that she described, she said Reight berated her for having never used a piece of surgical equipment before, even though she had asked if he could show her how to use it. At one point she recalled him saying, “‘Thank you for telling us that you don’t know what you’re doing.’”

Erin Rhoda is the editor of Maine Focus at the Bangor Daily News. She may be reached at erhoda@bangordailynews.com.