RELATED: Doctor siphoned funds for personal use, suits allege

RELATED: Lawsuits shed light on clinic

BY JIM HALL

Dr. Barbara Mercado’s first job after residency training was at Central Virginia OB/GYN in Fredericksburg.
She joined Dr. Joon Kil, the practice’s founder, in 1999 and stayed there until last year.
During those years, Kil was her mentor, Mercado said, the best surgeon she had ever worked with. He delivered two of her children.
“I’ve seen him in action,” she said in an interview. “I knew he would take the greatest care of me.”
However, their relationship grew distant over the years, and at the end of 2010, Kil had her fired, according to a lawsuit she filed against him. Soon after the firing, Mercado, 43 and a resident of Spotsylvania County, filed the lawsuit, accusing Kil of failing to pay her the money she had earned.
The lawsuit was settled one month later. Kil declined to comment.
A key element of Mercado’s claim was the 2006 employment contract that she signed with Kil. The contract paid her a base salary but also included the possibility of a performance bonus, according to the lawsuit.
Her base salary was 40 percent of the first $1.2 million in revenue that she generated, or up to $480,000 a year, according to the lawsuit. If her annual receipts exceeded $1.2 million, Mercado earned 45 percent of the total.
At first, the new contract served as an incentive, a goal that Mercado strived to achieve, she said.
She said she was one of the busiest physicians in the practice, regularly seeing 40 or more patients a day. One day she saw 62 patients, she said.
She estimated that she delivered 300 babies a year while at Central Virginia. Her personal record was eight babies in one night, she said.
Yet each Christmas season, when the year-end accounting was done, Mercado failed to earn a bonus, she said.
“Every year she would say, ‘This is the year, this is the year,’ but she would never get there,” said Brandon Stallard, her husband.
Mercado said in an interview that she was told in late 2010 that her receipts for that year had not met minimum goals. As a result, she would not get her bonus that year, nor would she get her regular December paycheck, Mercado said.
Mercado said she had not only met minimum goals but believed she had earned a bonus. In fact, she was told she would not be paid for December in the afternoon of a day on which she had already seen 26 patients, she said.
Eventually, in November 2010, Mercado “made demand for payment of her full compensation,” according to her lawsuit. In the lawsuit, Mercado said Kil and others at Central Virginia OB/GYN “intentionally misrepresented to Dr. Mercado her monthly and annual receipts.”
She specifically cited the receipts earned for the care of indigent patients at Mary Washington Hospital.
Mercado’s lawsuit said she provided the indigent care but did not get credit for it. Kil deposited the $25,000 monthly payment from the hospital into his personal bank account, according to the lawsuit.
In December 2010, Kil instructed Bobbi Clarke, his practice manager, to fire Mercado, according to court papers.
Two weeks later, Mercado filed suit against Kil and Clarke. She later “nonsuited” the claim against Clarke.
Mercado said Kil offered her a settlement, which she accepted. Mercado declined to talk about the terms of the settlement, but it came about 30 days after she filed her suit. Her attorney told Mercado that the settlement was one of the fastest she had ever seen, Mercado said.
After the settlement, Mercado returned to work at Central Virginia under a new contract. She stayed for 10 months before opening a solo practice, Generations of Women OB–GYN, in Fredericksburg in November.
Mercado said she respects Kil, despite their legal differences, and is still a patient at Central Virginia. Earlier this month, she delivered her third child, a baby girl. Dr. Hector Colon, one of her former colleagues at Central Virginia, delivered the baby by cesarean section.