If the Walls Could Talk Podcast™ – Episode 3: “Bad Apples”

The FBI’s investigation investigation into Edgewater Hospital took off during the 1990s. Episode 3: “Bad Apples” traces how an unrelated investigation into a Chicago hospital led the FBI to the insurance fraud scheme happening at Edgewater Hospital. What tipped off the feds? Some of the doctors involved in the fraud scheme at the other hospital also were on staff at Edgewater Hospital.

As part of their investigation, the feds had doctors wearing wires to secretly record conversations about Edgewater Hospital’s fraud scheme. In all, they recorded over 900 cassette tapes. These tapes led investigators to management at Edgewater Hospital: including Roger Ehmen and Peter Rogan. 

The FBI learned Roger passed out bogus contracts to multiple doctors in order to get them to send patients to the hospital. If that wasn’t bad enough, the hospital also utilized what were known as “patient recruiters”. These recruiters were paid to go to homeless shelters to round up people willing to fake symptoms in order to get admitted to Edgewater Hospital. These “patient recruiters” promised these folks a free meal and a warm place to sleep. If that didn’t work, they also offered money, drugs or cigarettes. 

Nurses reported how doctors were quick to amputate limbs and perform procedures on people who didn’t need them. One patient describes how she ended up at Edgewater’s ER after suffering from a panic attack…despite the EMT questioning if she was sure she wanted to be taken there. This patient was shocked when the doctor pressed on her abdomen and informed her that she needed a hysterectomy. The once proud Chicago hospital took on nicknames “dead water” and “the butcher shop”. Hospital employees and people in the neighborhood even said they’d seek medical treatment anywhere but Edgewater. 

As patients who weren’t sick kept showing up, doctors and nurses complained to their superiors and demanded to know what was happening. Hospital management then became suspicious that someone within the hospital might be cooperating with investigators. They were right. Eventually, the feds set a trap for Peter Rogan by wiring up one of his co-conspirators prior to a meeting. But Peter said exactly what the feds did not want to hear.   

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Learn more about the crooked doctor, Monty McClellan, and his connection to the scheme at Edgewater. We’ll also share how a TV station did a fluff piece on Dr. McClellan and how viewers called the TV station to ask if the TV reporter had bothered to look into the doctor’s checkered past. The reporter returned the next day to ask some tough questions and things got awkward. Dr. McClellan’s answers are cringeworthy.

A separate investigation of another Chicago hospital led the FBI to Edgewater. We’ll discuss what happened at that other hospital, how the feds got tipped off and why those 900 tapes of secretly recorded conversations were so difficult for us to obtain.

Hear the full unedited interview with Journalist Bruce Japsen — who covered the story for Crain’s, Modern Healthcare and the Chicago Tribune. Bruce explains that as far back as 1993, it was well known among the medical community that something fishy was going on at Edgewater Hospital…and no one stepped in to stop it.

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