Former Business Partner Sues Dr. Alonzo Williams Amid Ongoing Legal Troubles

Dr. Brian McGee started working with Dr. Alonzo Williams at the Arkansas Diagnostic Center in Little Rock in 2018.(Provided)

When a former business partner sued Dr. Alonzo Williams this month, it was the latest blow to a once-celebrated gastroenterologist whose medical license was revoked in August.

Dr. Brian McGee said in a lawsuit that Williams, 73, retaliated against him for complaining to a medical management firm about Williams’ administration of the Arkansas Diagnostic Center of Little Rock. Williams was the center’s medical director.

McGee said in the suit that he complained to Covenant Surgical Partners Inc. of Nashville, Tennessee, about Williams’ “prioritization of profit over patient care, poor treatment of medical staff, sexual misconduct [and] racial discrimination.”

The lawsuit, filed Jan. 14 in Pulaski County Circuit Court, came five months after a two-day hearing that included allegations that Williams engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with an employee, improperly prescribed medication and “performed numerous inappropriate medical procedures,” according to the Arkansas State Medical Board.

Williams denied the allegations.

McGee is on the Medical Board, but recused himself from Williams’ disciplinary hearing.

McGee had joined Arkansas Diagnostic Center in 2018 with plans to take over Williams’ practice when he retired, his lawsuit said. He started complaining to Covenant about Williams’ practice in August 2022, the lawsuit said.

McGee also complained about Suzette Siegler, the center’s nurse manager. She is named as a defendant in the case, along with Williams and Covenant.

Covenant also provides management services to Gastroenterology & Surgery Center of Arkansas, which it owns with Williams. The surgery center and ADC practiced at the same address.

McGee claims that he was forced to resign, costing him his $2.4 million investment in the surgery center and his future employment.

The lawsuit said McGee’s ouster was a result of his complaints.

Williams is contesting his punishment by the Medical Board, which found that he had demonstrated unprofessional conduct including “grossly negligent or ignorant malpractice.” The board, however, found no evidence that Williams sexually harassed an employee.

Williams, who lives in Phillips County, has asked Phillips County Circuit Court to review the revocation of his license.

Williams, who served on the Medical Board from September 1985 to December 2008, is Black. He claims in the Phillips County filing that the board discriminated against him and never similarly punished a white doctor.

He alleged his due process rights were violated and the board’s action “was unduly harsh.”

He also said that this was the first disciplinary finding against him.

The Medical Board “made zero deliberations” before it took Williams’ license, Williams’ petition for judicial review said. “That in and of itself is demonstrative of the disparity in treatment Dr. Williams received from the Board.”

Williams’ attorney, Sylvester Smith of North Little Rock, didn’t respond to messages from Arkansas Business. Attorneys for Covenant and Siegler didn’t immediately return calls for comment.

The Arkansas attorney general’s office is representing the board and has asked that Williams’ case be dismissed. Williams’ petition is pending.

As of Tuesday, Williams had not filed a response to McGee’s lawsuit, filed by attorneys John Tull III and Laura O’Hara of Quattlebaum Grooms & Tull of Little Rock.

When he hired McGee in 2018 to work at the Arkansas Diagnostic Center, Williams had an eye on retirement. McGee had signed a five-year contract to work at ADC.

Covenant provided management services to the center.

Born in West Helena in 1951, Williams had been in private practice since 1984. The Arkansas Diagnostic Center’s website touted Williams as being a “gastroenterology consultant for hospitals throughout Little Rock and is a member of a number of prominent professional organizations.”

Williams told the Medical Board in August that he wanted to select another African-American as his new colleague. He said he picked McGee, “and it didn’t work out.”

McGee said in his lawsuit that the first few years at the practice were “positive.”

But then starting in 2021, Williams and Siegler allegedly “began abusing their positions” at the center, which hurt McGee, patients and the women who worked at the practice, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said that they started to schedule an “excessive number of appointments, creating patient volume, traffic, and care quality issues.”

McGee alleged that Williams often didn’t see the patients, but instead sent a medical assistant, who was unqualified, to appointments. In addition, Williams billed the patients as if he’d seen them, the lawsuit said.

“Williams frequently performed unnecessary procedures on patients so that he could bill that procedure to the patient, insurance provider, or Medicaid,” the lawsuit said.

Or Williams billed patients for procedures that weren’t provided, the suit said.

McGee also alleged that Williams “engaged in improper sexual activity with female medical assistants at ADC.”

Williams denied any improper sexual activity. “I wouldn’t do that,” Williams said during the Medical Board hearing in August 2024.

“I’ve been in practice for 40 years. I’ve been on staff at probably 10 or 12 institutions, and nobody’s ever suggested I sexually harassed anybody,” Williams testified.

In August 2022, McGee started reporting Williams and Siegler to Covenant. In February 2023, Covenant sent a human resources representative to the center to talk with the employees.

But after the visit, McGee said, the alleged poor patient care, fraudulent billing and abuse of the women employees continued.

Before McGee’s contract expired, Williams allegedly threatened to report McGee to the National Practitioner Data Bank if he didn’t resign. A doctor being reported to the NPDB would be a mark on his career and take years to resolve. So McGee resigned, his lawsuit said.

Starting in August 2023, the Medical Board started receiving numerous complaints about Williams.

Williams told the board in August 2024 that “I don’t like to get into conspiracy theories, but over the last eight months, I’ve been bombarded with anonymous complaints.”

In March 2024, the Office of Medicaid Inspector General suspended all payments for Medicaid services provided by Williams pending a full investigation into an allegation of fraud.

After conducting a preliminary investigation, the OMIG found “a credible allegation of fraud, including but not limited to allegations that the provider performed certain procedures that were not medically necessary, failed to adequately assess certain beneficiaries before invasive procedures, and billed for services not rendered,” according to an OMIG letter. The suspension has not been lifted.

Williams told the Medical Board in August that he would do a better job at his practice.

He offered to surrender his Drug Enforcement Administration license, which allowed him to prescribe controlled substances.

“I look forward to dropping the DEA, really,” Williams said. He said that he only prescribed controlled substances for a few dozen patients, and that was “not something I want to do at this point in my career.”

He said that he was semiretired and worked three days a week. “I will probably continue to practice medicine because I enjoy it,” Williams said at the Medical Board hearing.

“I have a lot of fun doing it, and it keeps me from having to do a bunch of honey dos. And I want to continue on, but I want to put my best foot forward and do a better job.”