Richard Scrushy was once the powerful founder and CEO of HealthSouth, but his career took a dramatic turn when he was convicted of bribery and fraud. He was sentenced to almost seven years in prison for paying off a governor in return for favorable treatment. Today, he claims he has new evidence that prosecutors hid exonerating witnesses during his trial.
Richard Scrushy was born in 1952 in Selma, Alabama, to a working-class family, his father repaired cash registers, and his mother worked as a nurse and respiratory therapist. As a child, he taught himself to play piano and guitar, and by age 12 he was already working odd jobs like mowing lawns and serving in a hotel just to help his family. He left high school at 17, got married, and worked tough manual jobs such as pumping gas and laying bricks while living in a trailer park. Later, he earned his GED and studied respiratory therapy at community college and then at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Richard Scrushy started his business journey in healthcare while working at Lifemark Corporation, where he oversaw operations in pharmacy, rehabilitation, and hospital acquisitions. After leaving Lifemark, he co-founded a small company called Amcare in 1984 with a few partners and an investment from Citicorp. That company soon became HealthSouth, and Scrushy served as its CEO and chairman, growing it into a massive outpatient surgery, diagnostics, and rehab provider with over 1,900 locations across the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Puerto Rico.
Beyond HealthSouth, Scrushy built a real estate business. He launched Capstone Capital, a real estate investment trust (REIT), to buy hospital properties and lease them back to HealthSouth and other medical firms. Under his leadership, HealthSouth hit multi-billion-dollar revenues and appeared on major financial indexes like the Fortune 500 and S&P 500.
As of 2025, Richard Scrushy’s net worth is around $81 million. He earned this large amount mainly through his work as the founder and CEO of HealthSouth Corporation, one of the biggest healthcare service companies in the United States.