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A Maine surgeon is facing potential discipline by a licensing board after his colleagues filed complaints about him allegedly bullying staff, sexually harassing women and failing to evaluate patients when needed.
The Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine held the start of an adjudicatory hearing on Tuesday to hear arguments about the alleged misconduct of Dr. Ian Reight, a surgeon at MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta. After the hearing concludes at a later date, the board will decide if there is enough evidence to show that Reight violated any laws or rules and, if so, what sanctions to impose.
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.
At the time, the hospital described the surgery group in public records as dysfunctional but placed the blame not on Reight but on a middle manager who it said did not do enough to lead the department.
That middle manager, Dr. Carlo Gammaitoni, said he tried to address issues but was retaliated against by being stripped of his management role when he brought forward others’ complaints. He later agreed to a confidential settlement with the hospital.
He was one person to report Reight to the licensing board, according to Tuesday’s testimony. The licensing board is considering a list of 15 reasons for potentially imposing discipline on Reight, most of them for engaging in unprofessional conduct. The hearing will continue on Aug. 12, with additional dates to be scheduled if necessary.
Under questioning Tuesday, Reight repeatedly said he never berated or discriminated against anyone, or he could not remember specific examples.
A report filed with the board alleged he at one point talked about a female surgeon in front of other staff, 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.”
In response, Reight said he didn’t recall saying that.
Another complaint alleged he threatened and bullied a male surgeon to get an operating room slot, castigating him “as unfeeling, uncooperative and self-centered,” according to the hearing record.
Reight said he never threatened or bullied anyone, that he was simply trying to get care for a patient who needed an operation, and that he later apologized to the surgeon for their “poor interaction.”
Another complaint alleged he repeatedly requested that a female doctor join him at mixed martial arts events. When she declined, “his attitude toward me changed from overly friendly to cold,” according to the report read aloud in the hearing.
Reight said he not once asked the female doctor to attend the social events and instead took his wife.
The only time he said something he shouldn’t have, he said, was when he insinuated that the female doctor was promiscuous by stating, “She has more stuff stuck in her than a porcupine has sticking out.”
Reight made the “unfortunate statement” outside of work and regrets it, he said at the hearing. He was unaware of the doctor’s later complaint about him to the Maine Human Rights Commission but said he trusted his employer took care of it for him. No one — whether the human rights commission or the hospital’s own human resources investigations — ever substantiated a complaint about him sexually harassing women, he said.
He never berated or belittled a different staff member in the surgery department in front of others in 2018, when he was alleged to have used profanity and brought the employee to tears in front of others, he said. He denied ever demeaning a scrub nurse in 2017 or telling a female scrub tech in 2018 that she looked like “a chemo patient.” He denied in another instance attributing the concerns of a breast cancer patient to how her husband would react to her breasts. He also denied calling a patient, who was also a hospital employee, “a fat sow.”
Another complaint asserted that he engaged in unprofessional conduct by being absent from the wound healing and hyperbaric oxygen therapy clinic when he was its medical director. Reight agreed that he was not available, and he didn’t attend any team meetings or training sessions. He was busy elsewhere, he testified, and the providers at the clinic did fine without him.
“I tried to be as involved as I could, but they were providing excellent care, and it didn’t change anything for those patients,” he said.
In response to questions about a lapse in his general surgery certification at the end of 2019, Reight said he told Gammaitoni about it, and he didn’t express concerns. Reight said he took the steps needed to get recertified as quickly as possible after he realized his mistake. It took roughly a year, a period he described as “brief.”
“My perception of what the time was was wrong,” he said. “I looked and said, ‘I’ve got to get this taken care of.’”
He also did not sign the operative note for an Oct. 8, 2020, operation until after the patient had been readmitted to the hospital following a significant complication of her initial surgery that left her in the hospital for 49 days. He did not document seeing her during her readmission and left her care to other surgeons.
He said that his father had been in hospice care and dying during that time. While he wished he had documented more of what he did, “I do feel I passed by and saw that patient.”
Other complaints assert that he failed to evaluate or document his evaluation of other patients in May 2020, February 2020 and December 2020, and that he failed to disclose his use of marijuana on his application to renew his medical license.
Erin Rhoda is the editor of Maine Focus at the Bangor Daily News. She may be reached at [email protected].
