Tenet Healthcare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tenet Healthcare Corporation is a holding company that owns and operates hospitals in the United States. The second-largest hospital chain, it is based in Dallas, Texas. Its stock ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange is NYSE: THC.[1]

On October 12, 2005, CNN reported that the Louisiana attorney general is investigating the possibility that mercy killings of critically ill patients by staff medical professionals at Memorial Medical Center, New Orleans occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. On September 13, Tenet issued a statement: "No patients drowned nor did any die as a result of lack of food or drinking water." (CNN) (BusinessWire)

Apparently, 24 of the patients were part of a Hospice unit run by LifeCare, a company that was renting the seventh floor at Memorial hospital. The staff of LifeCare abandoned their stations leaving Tenet to care for the Hospice patients. During this period, as expected, 24 of the Hospice patients died. Tenet workers placed these corpses (numbering in the 20-30 range) in the chapel (since the morgue was now full) along with all their records for subsequent pickup once things started to return to normal in New Orleans.

Bloomberg reported on June 30, 2006 that Tenet has agreed to pay $725 million in cash and give up $175 million in fees to resolve claims it defrauded the federal government for its over-billing of medicare claims during six years of the 1990s. To finance the settlement, it plans to sell 11 hospitals in four states. [2]

The book Coronary by author Stephen Klaidman alleges over 600 patients were subjected to unnecessary heart surgeries at the Redding Medical Center, a Tenet hospital.