Cape Fear Center for Medical Arts follow-up

Monday, WWAY told you about an administrator of a Wilmington health clinic who was involved in a financial dispute with a physician’s assistant. The administrator, Tammy Creasy, stopped payment on a check intended to give the physician’s assistant insurance coverage for the week he filled in at the clinic.

Tammy Creasy is the administrator of the Cape Fear Center for Medical Arts. She and Physician’s Assistant Gene Gonzalez agreed that Gonzalez would fill in at the clinic for a week. Creasy said most independent providers, like Gonzalez, have their own malpractice insurance.

Gonzalez said he did not have insurance that would cover him at this clinic. Creasy wrote a check to an insurance company to cover him.

“I wrote the check for $750 and he mailed it. I gave it to him, I said OK, you know it’s in the mail and you’re covered and your retroactive care. I said you mail it, I trusted him to do this,” Creasy said.

Tammy Creasy subsequently stopped payment on that check after confusion arouse about Gonzalez’s pay check that he says he never received. The check should have included a $750 insurance payment.

Creasy said, “He should have paid his malpractice himself if he is self-contracted, but instead he held me for ransom to pay it in the middle of the week. He wasn’t going to see any patients unless I paid it, so I had no choice.”

With the payment stopped on the insurance check, Gonzalez said I meant he did not have coverage the week he worked there, so he took legal action and sued for the money.

Gonzalez and Creasy were in court Monday, September 15, 2008 over his pay. The judge ruled in Gonzalez’s favor. Creasy was late to court, and the case was already heard when she got there. She plans to appeal.