Friday, July 08, 2005

Mediation hearing set in Cox lawsuit

The two sides in a wrongful termination lawsuit against Lester E. Cox Medical Center have selected a neutral mediator, according to a document filed Thursday in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
James Condry, a Springfield attorney will meet with the two former employees who filed the lawsuit, Roger Cochran and Dennis Morris, and Cox officials 8 a.m. Aug. 15, according to the document.
Cochran and Morris claim they were fired because they cooperated with a federal investigation into possible criminal activity by hospital officials. The two claim Cox used an illegal method to jack up Medicare reimbursements for patients, and paid kickbacks to doctors who referred patients to their dialysis center, but did no other work for the money.
In a civil suit filed in June, Cochran, Nixa, an intensive care unit critical care nurse with the hospital for the past 22 years, and Morris, Springfield, the hospital's administrative director of Ozarks Dialysis since 1995, claim they were fired in May in a violation of the Federal Whistleblowers Protective Act.
More information about the lawsuit, which was first revealed in The Turner Report, can be found at the following link:
http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2005/06/lawsuit-cox-subject-of-federal-probe.html

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