Tenet Healthcare

Through its brands, subsidiaries, joint ventures, and partnerships,[7] including United Surgical Partners International (USPI),[8] the company operates 65 hospitals and over 450 healthcare facilities.Tenet was first incorporated in 1969,[10] by attorneys Richard Eamer, Leonard Cohen and John Bedrosian, as National Medical Enterprises, (NME) and headquartered in Los Angeles, California.[15] Tenet possessed a dominant market share in Southern California at the time and envisaged the same prospects in South Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area.In 1994, NME bought American Medical Holdings for $3.35 billion, which strengthened its presence in Southern California and South Florida, and extended into New Orleans, Louisiana and Texas.[22] Federal investigations into the company's billing practices, particularly those related to Medicare, began late in 2002, leading to a decline in Tenet's stock price of about 70%.[29][30] Tenet also entered into a five-year corporate integrity agreement with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services that required the company to provide detailed financial reports on its patient mix, collection rates and accounts receivables.[43] The deal would have created the largest hospital company in the U.S.[43] In April 2012, Tenet agreed to pay $42.75 million to resolve allegations that it improperly billed Medicare between 2005 and 2007.[46][47] Through its acquisition of Vanguard, Tenet acquired 28 hospitals and 39 outpatient centers that served communities in Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan and Texas.[49] In March 2014, Tenet formed a partnership with the Yale New Haven Health System to create a healthcare delivery network in Connecticut.[51] Then in May 2014, Tenet announced plans to partner with the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso to develop a new 140-bed teaching hospital on the city's west side.[82] In September 2016, an agreement between Tenet and Humana Inc, a health insurance company based in Louisville, Kentucky, came to an end, putting Tenet's facilities and physicians out-of-network for patients with Humana insurance, including those covered through commercial plans, Medicare Advantage, Healthcare Marketplace Exchange, Medicaid and TRICARE.[92] In the United States in 2018, Tenet Healthcare sold the for-profit MacNeal Hospital, in Berwyn, Illinois, to the non-profit regional Roman Catholic Loyola Medicine.[93] In January 2019, Tenet Healthcare sold its three remaining Chicago-area for-profit hospitals to Los Angeles-based Pipeline Health, which is partially owned and operated by Eric E. Whitaker.[106] In the late 1990s through the early 2000s, Redding Medical Center (at the time, a Tenet-owned hospital), was investigated for performing unnecessary heart surgeries on over 600 patients.To settle these allegations, Tenet agreed to pay a $54 million fine to the federal government and the state of California, without admitting wrongdoing.[109] The scandal and subsequent federal investigation are described in the book Coronary: A True Story of Medicine Gone Awry by author Stephen Klaidman.[110][111][112] In the mid 1990s, Tenet had a strategy of buying up community hospitals in Southern California in an effort to capitalize on rising insurance costs in the region.The company and former CEO Jeffrey Barbakow received scrutiny after Tenet began closing these community hospitals, inconsistently citing financial difficulties.[114][115] St. Luke Medical Center at the time was one of only two general care community hospitals to serve the city, Tenet was negatively criticized after numerous complaints accused the company of neglecting the facility after recent renovations.In October 2016, Tenet Healthcare and two of its subsidiaries agreed to pay $513M to resolve allegations that they had defrauded the United States and had made use of a kickback scheme to gain patient referrals.[122] The two subsidiaries pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and to using kickbacks and bribes to refer primarily female undocumented Hispanic patients towards the labor and delivery services of Tenet Healthcare.The hospital became surrounded by flood waters, which submersed the lower floors of the building, rendering the facility's emergency generators inoperable.Hospital staff were left to care for patients without electricity, sanitation, air conditioning, or adequate food and drinking water.In July 2006, Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry were arrested after being charged by Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti of second-degree murder in the deaths of four patients.[5] Through its brands, subsidiaries, joint ventures, and partnerships with companies such as United Surgical Partners International (USPI),[45][62] as of September 30, 2019, Tenet operated 65 hospitals and approximately 500 other healthcare facilities.[50] In 2014, Tenet Healthcare was a presenting sponsor of the third annual Clinton Foundation Health Matters Conference in La Quinta, California.