Fired surgeon sues Iowa hospital, alleging patients put at risk

A Bremer County hospital is being sued by a fired surgeon who alleges the hospital has put patients at risk.

Dr. John Matthew Glascock, a bariatric surgeon, is suing Waverly Health Center and its CEO, Jodi Geerts, in Bremer County District Court. Court records indicate Glascock was employed by the hospital from July 2018 to Dec. 22, 2024, when he was fired.

According to the lawsuit, Glascock specializes in advanced laparoscopic surgery and bariatric surgery.

Before joining Waverly Health Center, he worked at Waterloo’s Covenant Medical Center from October 2002 through June 2018. Covenant hired Glascock to establish a surgical weight loss program, which later became known as the Midwest Institute of Advanced Laparoscopic Surgery. The lawsuit claims the program “was very profitable and generated millions of dollars in revenue for Covenant.”

In 2017, the lawsuit claims, Waverly Health Center began recruiting Glascock and encouraging him to leave Covenant. In July 2018, Waverly Health Center hired Glascock to conduct advanced laparoscopic and bariatric surgery, to be marketed under the brand name “Healthy You.” The lawsuit alleges the program grew each year and represented “a new and profitable service line” for the Waverly hospital, with Glascock performing “about 1,000 surgical cases that generated millions of dollars in additional revenue” for the hospital.

In January 2023, Geerts was named CEO of the hospital. In August 2024, Glascock’s first assistant for his surgeries, Jason Jampoler, accepted a traveling-nurse position and gave the hospital two weeks’ notice of his departure.

The lawsuit alleges Glascock then met with Geerts to impress upon her the importance of retaining Jampoler. Geerts allegedly responded by indicating the hospital would not try to prevent Jampoler’s departure and Glascock would have to use whomever the hospital chose for him to assist with surgeries.

Surgery halted due to ‘patient safety’ concerns

According to the lawsuit, shortly after Jampoler left, Glascock attempted to perform a weight-loss operation known as a sleeve gastrectomy. The nurse selected to assist with the operation was, the lawsuit claims, unfamiliar with Glascock and had never participated in a bariatric surgical case.

“It was clear from the start of the procedure that the nurse WHC selected lacked the skill, ability, and experience to be Dr. Glascock’s first assistant,” the lawsuit claims, adding that Glascock soon stopped the surgery. “In Dr. Glascock’s medical judgment, continuing the surgery without a qualified and competent first assistant put the patient’s safety at risk,” the lawsuit alleges.

Glascock alleges he then met again with Geerts and “stressed that the lack of a competent first assistant to work with him was, first and foremost, a patient safety issue, and that the issue had to be resolved before he conducted, or attempted to conduct, another bariatric surgery.”

Geerts, the lawsuit claims, again told Glascock he “would work with whomever WHC assigned him.” Glascock allegedly told Geerts he intended to raise the issue with the hospital’s board of trustees at its Sept. 23, 2024, meeting, but a few hours before that meeting was to begin, Geerts handed him a “termination notice,” indicating he was being fired without cause and was relieved of his duties, effective immediately.

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By firing him “for no reason, Geerts and the Board of Trustees jeopardized the health, safety, and well-being of WHC’s ‘Healthy You’ patients, a significant number of whom were scheduled for surgical procedures or were involved in complex post-operative management and care,” the lawsuit claims. “While his former colleagues watched in horror, Dr. Glascock cleaned out his office and left the building.”

The lawsuit claims Glascock’s firing was in violation of public policy and constitutes wrongful termination and breach of contract. The lawsuit also seeks damages due to Geerts’ alleged intentional interference with his contract.

Waverly Health Center has yet to file a response to the lawsuit. A spokesperson for the hospital declined to comment on the case.

Glascock’s previous employer alleged fraud

The lawsuit against Waverly Health Center isn’t the first time Glascock has sued a former employer.

Court records show Glascock’s employment agreement with Covenant had contained a noncompete clause that restricted him from engaging in a medical practice in his area of specialty for 18 months. The agreement included a buyout provision that could have relieved Glascock of the noncompete restriction in exchange for one year’s compensation, according to court records.

When Glascock quit in 2018, he asked that Covenant release him from the noncompete clause, but was unwilling to pay the buyout fee. Covenant refused the request, and Glascock then went to work at Waverly, less than 25 miles from Covenant. Covenant eventually hired a bariatric surgeon to replace Glascock, but according to subsequent court rulings, that surgeon worked at Covenant for less than two months before being fired for misconduct.

Covenant’s bariatric surgery clinic closed and lost its accreditation about one year after Glascock left. Glascock filed two lawsuits against Covenant, one alleging he was not awarded agreed-upon incentive payments, and one that sought to have the noncompete clause declared unenforceable.

Covenant then filed a counterclaim for damages resulting from Glascock’s alleged violation of the terms of his contract. In 2021, a judge ruled in favor of Covenant in the amount of almost $1.2 million — $507,000 plus $660,517 in interest and attorney fees.

Glascock appealed, but the Iowa Court of Appeals upheld the judgment and also awarded Covenant $82,330 in additional attorney fees tied to the appeal.

Covenant then sued Glascock again, alleging that despite his “substantial income and significant assets,” Glascock had refused to pay the judgment against him, forcing Covenant to go after his assets, which reportedly included more than $1 million worth of California real estate and an assortment of vintage motorcycles.

Covenant alleged Glascock committed fraud by transferring ownership of the motorcycles and other assets to his mother, Dorothy K. Glascock, and by working with an “asset-hiding firm” that openly promoted its ability to help people hide their assets from creditors.

“Glascock is a wealthy doctor, with millions of dollars in mansions and real estate who won’t ... pay his debts and enlists his family to help hide his assets to avoid collection,” attorneys for Covenant alleged in court filings.

The lawsuit was dismissed shortly after attorneys for Glascock and Covenant informed the court a settlement had been reached.

Malpractice claims filed by patients

In 2020, Glascock and Waverly Health Center were sued by the family of the late Byron Hesse, who had died hours after bariatric surgery at the hospital. The lawsuit alleged that during the operation, Glascock nicked Hesse’s spleen, then attempted a repair. During an autopsy, roughly 130 ounces of “liquid and clotted blood” was allegedly found in Hesse’s abdominal cavity and Hesse’s death was allegedly attributed to surgical complications.

Glascock and the hospital denied any wrongdoing and the case was later dismissed with no public disclosure of any settlement.

In 2023, Glascock and Wavery Health Center were sued by another patient, Erin Barker of Oelwein, who claimed her botched bariatric surgery and Glascock’s subsequent alleged negligence left her “starving” and close to death.

In her lawsuit, she claimed that after her vision began to fail and her body began to shut down in the wake of her surgery, she was taken to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics where she underwent immediate surgery. “The doctors at UIHC told Erin that her body, specifically her organs, were 24 hours away from completely failing and she could have died within 48 hours,” the lawsuit alleged.

Glascock and Waverly denied any wrongdoing. The lawsuit was dismissed after a judge ruled that the certificate of merit that must accompany such lawsuits had been filed improperly as it was not in the form of a sworn affidavit.

This article first appeared in the Iowa Capital Dispatch.