A doctor shouted at a sick mother to ‘get the hell out.’ Now he’s
under criminal investigation.
A doctor in northern Florida is under criminal investigation after he was seen on video shouting at a patient to “get the hell out” of an urgent-care clinic, then apparently grabbing her daughter's cellphone, which was recording the incident.
Peter Gallogly, a physician at Gainesville After-Hours Clinic, was captured on video Monday arguing with a patient who was scolding him for a long wait time.
“Are you kidding me?” Gallogly shouted at the patient, Jessica Stipe, reminding her that he had already tested her urine. “Does that take three seconds, you think?”
“I don’t know how long it takes,” Stipe said.
“Do you want to be seen or not?” he replied.
Stipe told the doctor that she was “miserable” and just wanted to “go home and get in my bed.”
“Fine,” Gallogly responded, “then get the hell out. Get your money and get the hell out.”
When Stipe told him he was being rude, he shouted: “Get the f--- out of my office. Now.”
Stipe’s daughter, who was recording the incident on a cellphone, then asked the doctor for his name. He appeared to snatch the cellphone out of her hand and walk away with it, saying, “You're recording this?”
Gainesville police spokesman Ben Tobias told The Washington Post that officers responded to the incident and have opened a criminal investigation into the case.
Stipe posted the video Monday night on Facebook, writing that she had made an appointment for 6:30 p.m. Stipe, who said she was “in severe pain and throwing up in the trash can,” had still not been seen at 7:45 p.m.
She said she requested that her co-pay be returned to her so she could go home to bed and then seek treatment elsewhere the next day. She said the doctor was “mad” and “when he saw it was being recorded he snatched my baby’s phone and shoved her when she tried to get it back.”
A person who answered the phone at the Gainesville After-Hours Clinic on Thursday declined to comment, but a statement on the medical center's Facebook page states that there was more to the exchange.
Gallogly, the physician, wrote that the video shows only the final moments of an hour-long argument, claiming that throughout her time in the clinic, Stipe had become “increasingly belligerent and abusive to the office staff, cursing them and threatening them with violence, because she was unwell and had been waiting to be seen by me for more than an hour.
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