Former chief medical officer sues Freeman, claims wrongful dismissal, discrimination

The former chief medical officer at Freeman Hospital filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against her former employer today, claiming Freeman Health CEO Matthew Fry fired her three months after he took the reins without ever documenting any concerns with her performance.

In her lawsuit, Amanda Harrell claims that two other females in executive or administrative positions were also fired about the same time she was.

In the petition, Harrell, who is represented by Ryan McEnaney of Siro Smith Dickson PC, Kansas City, says Fry announced she was being replaced and then two days later had her escorted from the building.

The lawsuit asks for damages, reinstatement and an injunction barring Freeman from "future discriminatory actions."

From the probable cause statement:

Plaintiff was employed by Defendant Freeman Health System, beginning in or around July 2016, including in her final position as Chief Medical Officer and Part-time Physician and continuing until her wrongful termination on or about July 23, 2025.

Defendant is engaged in an industry affecting commerce and they have employed 500 or more employees for each working day in each of 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year.

At all relevant times Defendant was an “employer” as defined by the MHRA, Mo. Rev. Stat. § 213.010(8), and thus Defendant is liable to Plaintiff under the MHRA and otherwise according to statutory and common law.

At all times herein mentioned, Plaintiff was an employee of Defendant within the meaning of the MHRA and a protected person within the meaning of the WPA, and she is entitled to all the benefits and protections of the MHRA and the WPA.

Throughout her employment with Defendant, Plaintiff was subject to the control of Defendant as to the means and manner of accomplishing her work as an employee.

Throughout her employment, Plaintiff performed all duties of her position as required, exceeded the expectations of her position and received praise and good reviews for her work.

Plaintiff is a 41-year-old woman.

During the course of Plaintiff’s employment with Defendant, shr experienced sex discrimination and retaliation for engaging in protected activity.

Plaintiff has years of experience at Freeman Health System as a high-performing internist, educator, population health leader, and physician leader including service as Medical Director of Population Health, Chair of the Division of Medicine, and a member of Freeman’s Medical Executive Committee.

At the time Freeman recruited Plaintiff to serve as Chief Medical Officer, she maintained a thriving clinical panel with more than 2,500 patients, and had established leadership experience within Freeman as Medical Director of Population Health, a member of the Medical Executive Committee, and a preceptor for residents and students.

Plaintiff had a strong local reputation, multiple Top Doc awards, and deep community ties.

When Plaintiff was recruited into and assumed the Chief Medical Officer role in or about December 2024, Freeman did not provide Plaintiff with a formal CMO onboarding program, structured transition, established executive workflows, or organized CMO-specific training for the position.

In the absence of a formal onboarding structure, Plaintiff proactively sought institutional guidance from Legal, Risk, Compliance, Human Resources, other executives, other Chief Medical Officers, and other appropriate resources, including requesting existing policies, workflows, processes, and educational resources necessary to perform the role. Plaintiff also identified and requested CMO-specific education and training, including before assuming the position, but was told that she could defer such education
until the following fiscal year and utilize available CME funds.

Within the first week Plaintiff was told Freeman was on the verge of losing trauma accreditation. She was not previously trained in trauma accreditation requirements and had to independently learn the standards involved. She coordinated and collaborated extensively with administrators, compliance officers, quality staff, and multiple clinical specialists to address the issue and ultimately resolve it, helping the organization maintain its trauma certification.

In accepting the CMO position, Plaintiff substantially reduced the number of patients in her established clinical panel while maintaining a limited part-time clinical practice.

Plaintiff also recruited and onboarded her replacement provider and ensured that her nurses and exam rooms would be transitioned to him, thereby eliminating any viable return path to her former clinic.

Plaintiff undertook an extensive restructuring of Freeman's fragmented medical-director model that previously included numerous medical-director arrangements, inconsistent expectations, compliance concerns, limited coordinated physician engagement, and significant financial implications

Plaintiff developed and fully implemented a new service-line leadership structure designed to improve physician engagement, accountability, interdisciplinary collaboration, compliance, and financial stewardship.

The structure was operational before Plaintiff's termination, and Plaintiff had already convened the first service-line director meeting, at which physician leaders expressed significant enthusiasm about working collaboratively toward common goals.

During her CMO tenure, Plaintiff had direct and substantive involvement in the recruitment of numerous physicians, including identifying recruitment needs, interacting with and interviewing candidates, facilitating physician-to-physician recruitment, addressing recruitment barriers, and helping advance candidates toward successful recruitment.

Plaintiff also successfully worked to implement and enforce compliance requirements that had previously been unenforced or inconsistently enforced; expanded access by bringing optometrists onto Freeman's medical staff for the first time; and initiated the process of integrating dentists from the affiliated dental school into the medical staff. Plaintiff further identified significant deficiencies in Freeman's credentialing processes, addressed immediate credentialing concerns, and advanced
modernization efforts that continued after her departure in coordination with the system's Epic implementation.

In or about April 2025, Freeman hired a new Chief Executive Officer, Matthew Fry.

Initially, the new CEO praised Plaintiff’s work and leadership, calling Plaintiff the “epitome of a servant leader.” Plaintiff and the CEO regularly communicated, and their interactions were nearly always positive, and he gave no indication that Plaintiff’s performance was deficient or that her position was in jeopardy.

During the spring and summer of 2025, Plaintiff repeatedly reported protected internal concerns relating to Defendant, among others, contract mismanagement, gender-based salary inequity, noncompliance regarding Radiology staffing, credentialing noncompliance, ACGME compliance, documentation of required hours and she pushed for better legal oversight.

Plaintiff raised these concerns to senior executives and Legal, Risk, Compliance, Finance, and other responsible departments.

Despite Plaintiff's repeated efforts to identify and correct these concerns, significant issues remained unresolved, and Plaintiff encountered resistance, delay, or reluctance to correct compensation, contracting, compliance, and quality concerns.

On or about July 16, 2025, without prior progressive discipline or notice that her CMO position was in jeopardy, Mr. Fry abruptly informed Plaintiff that she was “not the CMO he needed.” Fry criticized Plaintiff for “learning on the job,” despite Plaintiff having previously requested CMO-specific education and onboarding resources and having proactively sought institutional guidance throughout her tenure.

However, no prior concerns had been documented, and the CEO never expressed any complaints about Plaintiff’s performance.

On or about July 17, 2025, the CEO simultaneously praised Plaintiff’s work while offering her a demotion to an undefined “part-time leadership role” with no title or salary outlined.

Although Fry initially told Plaintiff to consider the proposed arrangement and indicated that they would continue discussing it, less than approximately twelve hours later he presented Plaintiff with a draft communication describing her transition from the CMO position and eventual return to her former clinic as effectively decided.

Plaintiff explained that a return to her former Southwest Internal Medicine practice was not realistically available because, in reliance on Freeman's recruitment of her into the CMO role, she had substantially transitioned her patient panel and recruited and onboarded her replacement physician.

When Plaintiff requested the basic terms necessary to evaluate the newly created position—including defined duties, compensation, authority, and other material terms—and requested additional time to consider the proposal, Fry expressed disappointment and demanded a yes-or-no answer within approximately thirty minutes.

On or about July 21, 2025, Freeman distributed a system-wide communication regarding Plaintiff's departure from the CMO role.

The CEO had repeatedly expressed significant concerns to Plaintiff regarding the performance of other senior executives who remained in their positions and were afforded continued opportunities and institutional support to address identified deficiencies.

On or about July 23, 2025, Plaintiff was terminated effective immediately and humiliatingly walked out of the building.

Plaintiff’s termination was also openly discussed at a meeting later that day amongst medical staff leaders. The CEO stated that Plaintiff’s termination was not a “gender issue” and he falsely stated that she was offered a role but declined to stay at Freeman.

Joplin is a tight-knit community that Plaintiff is embedded in, and her illegal termination has harmed her professionally, financially, and emotionally. Plaintiff was recruited and encouraged to step fully into leadership and praised throughout her tenure– only to be discarded suddenly, unfairly, and without a valid process.

Prior to and including Plaintiff’s wrongful termination, Plaintiff experienced a pattern and practice of disparate treatment in the terms and conditions of her employment based on gender and/or retaliation.

Plaintiff was continually treated differently than male employees.

Plaintiff was wrongfully terminated on July 23, 2025, even though she continually performed her job as required and was terminated for false, pretextual reasons.

Shortly after Plaintiff's termination, Freeman appointed a male physician to Plaintiff's former CMO position who Plaintiff had interviewed for a hospitalist position approximately one week before her termination. On information and belief, her male replacement had not previously served as a Chief Medical Officer.

On information and belief, at least two other women in executive and administrative leadership positions were terminated around the same time as Plaintiff.

Freeman Health System discriminated against Plaintiff because of her gender, and in retaliation for her complaints of discrimination in violation of the MHRA, and Defendant retaliated against her for reporting violations or potential violations of law or public policy in violation of the WPA.