Business
More government probes for Tenet
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted May 3, 2004
Federal prosecutors have launched two new, unrelated inquiries into the practices of two Tenet Healthcare hospitals in California, the troubled hospital company announced.
Tenet said on April 14 that it had received a request from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles seeking information about coding and billing practices at a cancer center at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, Calif.
The company said it also had received a request for documents about the relationship between Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, Calif. and Allied Homecare Consultants Inc., an independent home health placement service.
Tenet has come under fire in the last couple years with government investigations of its billing practices and relationships with doctors. In August 2003, the company agreed to pay the federal government $54 million to settle claims that doctors performed unnecessary cardiac procedures to boost profits at Tenet's Redding Medical Center in northern California.
On April 16, Tenet announced that it had reached an agreement to sell the Redding Medical Center in northern California to Hospital Partners of America Inc., for $60 million. The proceeds will be retained by a Tenet subsidiary that owns the 246-bed hospital. The sale is expected to be completed by June 30.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/05/03/bibf0503.htm.
