Atlanta clinic promoting unconventional medicine has controversial history

An examination by the AJC found that Progressive is part of a web of healthcare-related companies established by Agolli over the past three decades that have come under scrutiny from regulators in three states over a variety of matters.

Physicians working at Agolli’s clinics have been investigated and disciplined by the medical boards in Georgia and Florida over issues that included a death.

More recently, the state comptroller in Tennessee reported that a company set up by Agolli to manage a hospital in rural Decatur County used the hospital to obtain questionable insurance reimbursements that could exceed $2.5 million.

The comptroller’s findings, virtually unknown outside of the small county in west Tennessee where it took place, are particularly compelling because alleged mismanagement of the hospital by Agolli’s company was among the factors that caused community leaders to close it six years ago.

“It was absolutely devastating to close that hospital,” said April Watkins Barrett, a member of the Decatur County Commission when the decision was made. “It affected lives. It affected healthcare. It affected our judicial system. It affected our ability to grow with industrial development.”

Credentials questioned

Agolli, 62, moved to Atlanta and opened Progressive in 1999 after several attempts to launch alternative medicine clinics in Florida. Unlike his other ventures, Progressive caught on, and Agolli soon expanded into other areas of healthcare.

Not long after launching Progressive, he opened a lab nearby for diagnostic testing and established a brand of dietary supplements that eventually would be sold online and in Progressive’s in-house store.

Agolli declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this story.

In a written statement provided to the AJC, Progressive referred to Agolli as “Dr. Agolli” but said he doesn’t provide medical care to patients. His work is strictly limited to education, coaching and business development, the statement says. Agolli’s social media videos are based on material “he has gleaned from many years working in the health care field” as well as seminars and “advanced degree programs,” the statement says.

In a 2005 deposition, Agolli said his interest in alternative medicine began in 1987, when the death of his father made him skeptical of conventional medicine. “I wasn’t happy with his particular care in allopathic medicine,” he testified, “and it fueled a burning desire … to learn other options.” He didn’t specify what caused his father’s death.

Credit: Instagram

Credit: Instagram

The option he chose was naturopathy, a controversial field in which practitioners often rely on so-called natural remedies such as herbs or supplements to treat ailments of all kinds.

At the time, Agolli was living in Florida, where naturopathy was prohibited by law, and that, he testified, played a role in his decision years later to move to Atlanta.

“So I knew Georgia was a good state … (because) there were no specific laws that I researched,” he testified.

According to the Progressive website, Agolli has a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine degree from the United States School of Naturopathy and Allied Sciences. However, the AJC could not determine whether a school by this name existed after the 1940s.

Besides Agolli, the Progressive website shows another person working there described as a “senior naturopathic doctor” and yet another described as a “licensed naturopathic physician.” Both are pictured wearing white coats.

Although Georgia doesn’t ban naturopaths, it doesn’t license them either, and, according to Georgia Composite Medical Board officials, it is, in fact, illegal for anyone without a healthcare license to diagnose and treat patients. It is also illegal for anyone calling themselves a naturopath to use the title “doctor” or “physician” in a clinical setting unless the person is a licensed medical physician.

Credit: Alexander vs. Progressive case f

Credit: Alexander vs. Progressive case f

In the statement provided to the AJC, Progressive said naturopaths along with nutritionists and “health coaches” are used by the clinic to supplement the care provided by physicians, advanced practice registered nurses and physician assistants. Patients are advised that naturopaths are not licensed by the state and sign informed consent agreements that say they were advised, the statement says.

Agolli’s bio on the website had also listed other health care credentials, some of which, the AJC found, offered a misleading picture of medical expertise.

The bio had said Agolli is board certified in integrative medicine by the American Association of Integrative Medicine. But, the AJC found, the organization no longer exists, and when it did exist, it was one of more than two dozen pay-to-play credentialing programs set up by Robert O’Block, a Springfield, Missouri, resident once described by The Washington Post as “the emperor of junk science forensics.”

In 2017, O’Block, 66, shot and killed his 27-year-old girlfriend before turning the gun on himself.

The bio also showed Agolli obtained what’s described as a Doctor of Pastoral Science & Medicine pastoral (Psc.D) license through the Pastoral Medical Association. That group, too, no longer exists and faced questions of legitimacy when it did.

A report by Dallas’ public radio station, KERA, in 2016 detailed how the group, based in the Dallas suburb of Irving, offered “pastoral medical” credentials to chiropractors and others who met unspecified standards and paid annual fees.

The Progressive statement did not address questions from the AJC regarding these credentials. But the information on the website was removed after the AJC submitted the questions.

Florida to Georgia

Agolli entered the world of alternative medicine in Florida in the 1990s with an ophthalmologist who lives there, Dr. Marvin Reich, and their partnership endured until they had a falling out a few years after starting Progressive.

Their first venture, Metabolic Treatment Center in Fort Myers, lasted only two years and eventually attracted the attention of the Florida medical board, which built a case against Reich. The case was based on allegations of unnecessary diagnostic testing and failure to keep adequate records and justify treatments.

Examining the evidence for the board, a University of Miami endocrinologist said it “points to a scheme to extract money.”

The board ordered Reich, who worked at the clinic two days a week while maintaining his ophthalmology practice, to pay a $10,000 fine, perform 100 hours of community service and repay the board for the cost of its investigation. However, the decision was later vacated by an appellate court because medical records could not be obtained from the clinic’s new owners.

Agolli and Reich next formed a company called Path Medical, opening clinics under that name in Fort Myers and Boca Raton. That venture was equally short-lived.

According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the company used full-page newspaper ads and radio infomercials hosted by Agolli to tout a “revolutionary breakthrough” in weight loss.

It also drew scrutiny, according to the paper, when an Iowa company complained to the Florida Department of Insurance that patients had been put on weight loss programs based on unjustified diagnoses of thyroid or metabolic disorders.

Moving to Atlanta allowed Agolli and Reich, commuting several days a week from his Florida home, to fly under the radar for several years. But that all changed on a June morning in 2002 when 56-year-old Susan Alexander collapsed and died while undergoing chelation at their clinic.

Chelation is approved by the Food and Drug Administration only for the removal of lead or other types of heavy metal poisoning, but Progressive, like eight other Georgia alternative medicine clinics the AJC has identified, uses the IV procedure to treat patients for a variety of ailments. In Alexander’s case, she had come to the clinic seeking treatment for chronic fatigue, lack of concentration and other issues.

The DeKalb County coroner determined the cause of death was an irregular heartbeat triggered by coronary artery disease. Alexander’s mother and brother filed a lawsuit alleging fraud, negligence and wrongful death, and as the suit played out in court, it put Progressive under a microscope.

In court filings, attorneys for the mother and brother asserted that the physician treating Susan, Dr. Viktor Bouquette, was 20 miles away in South Atlanta for a speech by President George W. Bush when she died and that Progressive wasn’t adequately prepared for a cardiac emergency.

The suit also developed deposition testimony revealing that Agolli had taken to wearing a white coat and was seeing patients and that he had hired as the clinic’s chief operating officer a physician who had just completed a four-month prison stretch for bankruptcy fraud and tax evasion and whose license had been suspended.

Credit: Alexander vs. Progressive case f

Credit: Alexander vs. Progressive case f

Agolli was “the driving force” behind a scheme to defraud patients, and Progressive was “the public face of a criminal enterprise that consisted of numerous purportedly independent entities,” according to one of the court filings by the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

In the end, however, the lawsuit had little impact because Alexander’s mother and brother agreed to a relatively modest settlement — $250,000 — paid by the insurance carrier for a physician assistant who was present when Susan died.

Alexander’s brother, Edwin Alexander, said he and his mother wanted to continue the suit but had little choice but to settle after they were advised that Bouquette didn’t have malpractice insurance and was also subject to federal tax liens that would have priority over any settlement.

“It’s something I’ll never forget, obviously, how he just walked away clean,” Edwin Alexander said, recalling his frustration recently in an interview with the AJC.

A peer reviewer for the Georgia medical board eventually determined that Bouquette departed from minimal standards in multiple ways, including failing to assess whether Alexander, a customer service rep for Neiman Marcus, even required chelation. But that, too, had little impact because the board’s decision came nine years after Alexander’s death and required only that Bouquette complete 30 hours of continuing medical education and pay a $7,500 fine.

Progressive declined in its written statement to address the details of Alexander’s death except to say Bouquette was attending a seminar on the morning she died and that “his licensed PA was on the premises to handle patient care.”

Bouquette still practices at Progressive and, according to the medical board, still lacks malpractice insurance.

A hospital shuttered

In January 2019, a company formed by Agolli, Progressive Hospital Group, took over the management of Decatur County General Hospital, the only hospital in Decatur County, Tennessee. Located on the Tennessee River between Nashville and Memphis in the small town of Parsons, Decatur General had previously been managed by three other companies.

Barrett, then serving on the commission, said it was hoped that Agolli, with years of experience operating a medical facility in Atlanta, would provide a new level of competence. She said Agolli twice came to commission meetings and that she spoke with him at length.

“He seemed like a very personable person and promised me that he had run this clinic and knew what needed to be done at the hospital and said basically all the right things,” Barrett said in a recent interview with the AJC.

Credit: Cassandra Stephenson, Jackson Sun via Imagn Content Services, LLC

Credit: Cassandra Stephenson, Jackson Sun via Imagn Content Services, LLC

But soon she was hearing something different, she said: Hospital employees were saying they’d been asked to sign off on lab tests they hadn’t done. The county terminated its agreement with Agolli’s company in February 2020 and closed the hospital a month later.

In a report issued April 1, 2020, the Tennessee comptroller found that Agolli’s company was using the hospital’s billing ID to make it look like lab tests were being performed at the hospital when, in fact, they were being performed at Dunwoody Labs, a business operated by Agolli and located about a mile from Progressive Medical Center’s location on North Shallowford Road.

Credit: Tennessee Comptroller of the Tre

Credit: Tennessee Comptroller of the Tre

By making it appear that the tests were done at a rural hospital, Agolli’s company could seek insurance reimbursement — in this case from Blue Cross Blue Shield — at a significantly higher rate. The comptroller’s report said Blue Cross Blue Shield may have overpaid as much as $1.6 million. In addition, there were about $1.2 million in reimbursements that were never due and not payable, the report says.

Requisition forms ordering lab tests were altered in appearance, including the logo, and some patient accounts associated with Dunwoody Labs were missing basic patient information, according to the report.

Credit: Tennessee Comptroller of the Tre

Credit: Tennessee Comptroller of the Tre

The comptroller also concluded that Agolli’s company failed to pay the IRS more than $783,000 it withheld from hospital employees and didn’t pay nearly $63,000 due to employees’ 401(k) retirement accounts. Based on money owed to vendors, employees, the IRS and other creditors, the hospital’s debt rose from $1 million to nearly $2.9 million in the 13 months Progressive managed the facility, the comptroller reported.

In its written statement to the AJC, Progressive denied any wrongdoing in its management of the hospital, claiming it set up a legitimate arrangement to provide the facility with “laboratory support.”

“We strongly dispute the conclusions of the Tennessee comptroller’s report as one-sided and extremely biased,” the statement says. “The report was based on incomplete and unverified information, and, notably, Progressive Hospital Group was never interviewed during the process.”

After the comptroller’s report became public, Blue Cross Blue Shield filed a lawsuit accusing Agolli, Progressive Hospital Group and Dunwoody Labs of fraud, civil conspiracy, tortious interference and unjust enrichment. Agolli “stood at the center” of a scheme that “he used to personally enrich himself via the corporate shells he controlled and dominated,” the suit claimed.

The suit also claimed that money from the alleged lab scheme was used to pay for “extravagances” that included a Land Rover Range Rover Supercharged with a base price of $107,000, a Jaguar XKR Coupe with a base price of $77,000 and a Ford Econoline E-350 super duty van with a base price of $32,000.

In response to the lawsuit, Agolli’s companies filed for bankruptcy, as did Agolli himself.

In its statement, Progressive disputed the allegations in the Blue Cross Blue Shield lawsuit and asserted that the vehicles in question were purchased before Agolli became involved with the hospital.

As for the bankruptcy filings, they were undertaken on the advice of attorneys “due to the expense of ongoing litigation and mounting legal expenses, not as an admission of wrongdoing,” the statement says.

According to Progressive, Agolli and his company tried to save the hospital but ultimately faced too many obstacles.

“Despite investing significant capital, resources and expenditures to stabilize operations, the structural limitations of the agreement and external factors prevented a successful turnaround,” the Progressive statement says.

Barrett, however, remembers things differently. Progressive was no savior, the former county commissioner said.

“(Progressive) presented themselves as someone coming in to help us, and instead we find out that they are using us to enrich themselves,” she said. “It was a slap in the face.”