announcement created an
absolute firestorm that never
ended. An analyst conference
call was scheduled for Jan. 3.
The last days of 2007 were
spent frantically preparing for
this. From my standpoint, it
was the last chance to "come
clean" about PI and DiscoCare
and to disclose how the rela-
tionship worked, the long lag
time in receivables and how it
was successful. The company
instead chose to remain secre-
tive and didn't provide full disclosure. To me, this was the final turning
point and it was all downhill from there.
After the DiscoCare acquisition
The first quarter of 2008 following the acquisition was insane. There
was a tremendous amount of work to do integrating DiscoCare into
ArthroCare. Before the acquisition, to my knowledge ArthroCare
didn't conduct an independent review to determine whether
DiscoCare was in compliance with all relevant healthcare laws. After
the acquisition, a healthcare attorney conducted an audit and deter-
mined that we needed to revise a number of DiscoCare procedures.
And of course, I was responsible for ensuring these were implement-
ed.
In addition, the negative Citron Research articles continued and
thestreet.com joined in. We spent a lot of time refuting the claims of
these websites. We all felt like we were under attack and a natural
7 1
A U G U S T 2 0 1 5 | O U T P A T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T
z SAN JACK David Applegate climbed to the top of Mt. San Jacinto in
Riverside County, Calif., last year.
Lue
Baty
