Duly Health and Care — the state’s largest physician-directed medical group — is facing dozens of new lawsuits alleging one of its former gynecologists behaved improperly while treating patients.

Four new lawsuits were announced Wednesday, with 37 more to be filed this week, according to the law firm Hurley McKenna and Mertz, against Duly (formerly known as DuPage Medical Group) and Dr. Vernon T. Cannon, a gynecologist and obstetrician from Arlington Heights.

Including previous filings, the total number of lawsuits filed against Duly and Cannon will be 53, according to Hurley McKenna and Mertz.

The lawsuits take Duly to task for allowing Cannon to continue working, despite complaints by patients and co-workers that alleged he was drunk while working, among other issues.

Duly “put its profits over its patients,” attorney Michael Mertz said at a Wednesday news conference.

Terri Hickey, director of external communications for Duly, issued a written statement on Wednesday.

“Duly takes allegations of physician misconduct extremely seriously, including those that have been raised concerning former DuPage Medical Group physician Vernon Cannon,” Hickey wrote. “The actions alleged are unacceptable and inconsistent with Duly’s mission to provide outstanding patient care and the ethical standards we expect our physicians to uphold.

“Duly vehemently denies that it knowingly allowed Dr. Cannon to engage in misconduct,” Hickey added, “and Dr. Cannon has not had any patient contact at Duly since he departed the practice in 2020.”

Cannon’s lawyer, Robert L. Larsen, said in a statement that the federal patient-privacy law limits what Cannon can say in response to the lawsuits.

“Suffice it to say we deny these allegations and intend to defend all of these claims,” Larsen wrote. “When we do, we believe the true facts will come out.”

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