Former Glenwood medical director charged with professional incompetency

The former medical director of the state-run Glenwood Resource Center is facing disciplinary charges of professional incompetency. (Photo via Google Earth; seal courtesy the State of Iowa)

Four years after he was forced from his job amid a wide-ranging scandal at the state-run Glenwood Resource Center, the facility’s former medical director is facing allegations of incompetence from the state’s own regulators.

The Iowa Board of Medicine has charged Dr. Mohammad E. Rehman with professional incompetency – an offense that is defined by the board as including malpractice, negligence, a lack of knowledge or ability to discharge one’s professional duties, or a failure to exercise a degree of care ordinarily exercised by physicians.

The board has not publicly disclosed the basis for the charge or publicly stated where or when the offending conduct took place.

The charge against Rehman was filed in June but was only recently made public. A board hearing on the matter has been scheduled for Sept. 18, 2025.

Rehman could not be reached for comment.

Court records indicate that as medical director at Glenwood, a state-run residential treatment center for severely disabled individuals, Rehman was the focus of a unanimous vote of “no confidence” from the medical staff in November 2018.

Rehman continued to work at the facility, but resigned in April 2020, with state officials saying the resignation had been submitted in lieu of his termination. His departure followed staff complaints of poor medical care, reports that the death rate at Glenwood had doubled, and that a federal investigation had begun into sexual arousal studies the home was planning to conduct on residents.

That same year, Rehman and Glenwood’s former superintendent were among the defendants named in a civil lawsuit filed by six former Glenwood employees, including two physicians and a nurse practitioner.

The lawsuit alleged Rehman had criticized doctors for providing residents with “too much” diagnostic care and treatment, and for sending too many patients to area hospitals for treatment rather than providing treatment using Glenwood staff.

The plaintiffs also alleged Rehman hired a physician at the facility to provide neurological care to Glenwood residents, although the doctor did not have any board certifications or experience as a neurologist. In addition, they claimed Rehman directed others to falsify or erase entries in medical records to hide damaging information that Rehman did not want to appear in the regularly audited patient records.

Much of the lawsuit centered on claims of wrongful termination in violation of public policy and on alleged violations of the state’s whistleblower law.

A Polk County judge dismissed the case earlier this year after ruling the plaintiffs had failed to show a clearly defined and well-recognized public policy that protected their activities at Glenwood, and that they had failed to show they acted as whistleblowers by reporting their concerns to law enforcement or other public officials. The plaintiffs have appealed that ruling.