CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Detailed accounts from more than 30 doctors at UVA Health about the concerns they had during the tenure of the former CEO of UVA Health, Dr. Craig Kent, are contained in a Febuary 2025 report obtained by the Jefferson Council through a public records request and published on their website.
The council is a UVA alumni group formed in 2020.
Kent began working for the health system in February of 2020, and according to the Cavalier Daily, after the results of an external review of UVA Health were presented to the Board of Visitors in February of last year, Kent resigned.
The board of visitors also received this report, which can be read here, written by Jones Swanson Huddell LLC, featuring the testimony of more than 30 doctors at UVA Health.
An attorney for Kent told CBS 6 Monday the allegations are “false."
One of the most serious allegations involves Dr. Trey Lee, a world-class pediatric oncologist recruited to UVA to continue his paradigm-changing bone marrow treatment for children.
Lee alleged that once Kent arrived, he stopped providing the precise equipment and specially trained staff needed for extraordinarily high-risk procedures.
Despite this, the report alleges Kent continued to pressure Lee to proceed with procedures under circumstances Lee described as tantamount to malpractice that could be deadly for child patients.
Multiple doctors also spoke out about the hiring of a new chief of cardiothoracic surgery. They alleged the search committee unanimously recommended against hiring a particular doctor, but Kent decided to hire them anyway.
Dr. Angela Taylor, the lead quality officer for heart and vascular surgeries, said she began receiving an increasingly long list of complaints about this doctor's surgeries, which she forwarded to Kent and his leadership team, according to the report. However, the report states she said the information was "buried" with this particular doctor.
Taylor then went to the credentials committee, detailing 13 specific cases in which the doctor was associated with patient endangerment, according to the report. The report states the committee voted to conduct an investigation, but in what Taylor called an unprecedented event, the doctor negotiated her resignation and the investigation was never completed.
Doctors in the report also claimed Kent eliminated a policy that only allowed UVA to accept patients transferred from another hospital's emergency department if they had a bed available. The change was allegedly made to fill the emergency ward with as many patients as possible.
According to the report, this led sick patients to wait side-by-side for hours in the emergency ward, even as Kent had ordered staff to keep rooms and beds empty for high-dollar elective surgery patients.
The physicians claim that when they warned Kent and other leadership about these issues, they were often dismissed and disciplined for not being "team players."
CBS 6 reached out to Dr. Kent for his response to the allegations in the report, and attorney Sean O’Connell, a shareholder with Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC sent us the following response:
"Based on your message, it appears that you are asking about a document recently circulated by the Jefferson Council. This is not the Williams & Connolly report. Rather, it is a memorandum prepared and publicly released nearly a year ago by individuals aligned with the plaintiffs in the lawsuit recently filed against Drs. K. Craig Kent, Melina Kibbe, Wendy Horton, and Allan Tsung. In summary, this document contains no new information and was originally prepared by the plaintiff’s attorneys to present the false allegations of a small group of faculty in the UVA School of Medicine, that are now the subject of litigation.
"On Friday, January 9, 2026, counsel for Drs. Kent, Kibbe, Horton, and Tsung filed a Motion to Dismiss in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia. The motion seeks dismissal of all claims brought against these individuals, based on clear legal deficiencies and a lack of factual support for the allegations asserted.
"Out of respect for the judicial process, the defendants and their legal counsel will not be making further public comment at this time. Please refer any future media requests to the University of Virginia."
A spokesperson for UVA Health sent the following statement about the report:
"UVA Health is aware of the materials produced by a third party not affiliated with UVA or UVA Health. Many of the executive leaders cited in the report are no longer employed by UVA Health. Given ongoing legal and personnel matters, UVA Health cannot further comment. We remain committed to our mission as a public academic health system, serving thousands of patients in communities across Virginia and beyond, to provide high-quality, innovative care delivered by exceptional clinicians."
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