Description and Financial Status:
"Tenet Healthcare Foundation, established in 1998, is a not-for-profit charitable foundation sponsored by Tenet Healthcare Corporation." Homepage for the Corporation  [See description of not-for-profit hospitals] . "Tenet is the second largest investor-owned health care services company in the United States. Tenet's key profit center was and is Redding Medical Center ("RMC"), a 238-bed, general hospital located at 1100  Butte Street, Redding, California 96001." [Weiss and Yourman, Attorneys for the plaintiff ] . "This Santa Barbara-based company, which owns or operates 113 hospitals and related businesses in 16 states" is currently facing litigation "triggered by an insurance company reporting concerns over billings for a higher-than-average number of procedures, such as heart surgeries, that qualify for the payments." [HeartLaw.Info. Redding Malpractice Info. Study: Tenet Charges Higher Drug Prices Than Other Hospitals. Excerpted from SacBee.com, Sunday, 24 November 2002].  Currently the corporation faces litigation from Heart Surgery patients and its stockholders, with  its CEO and CFO Barbakow and Mackey named in fraud and deceit by members of their Stockholding community. Both men were dismissed in Nov, 2002, but both left with handsome bank accounts. The litigation forced the company to begin  an internal review of pricing, including of pharmaceuticals, that it expects to complete next month, said Tenet spokesman Harry Anderson [reported Sunday, 24 November 2002 The Sacramento Bee]."Its stock has plunged 70 percent in the past year. " [Tenet, nurse's union reach agreement. From  allnurses.com, Friday May 2, 2003]  The current cost vs profit margin of the corporation continues to show ongoing financial health although the  current evalution of Tenet for its current and potential owners is not as strong as before the recent litigation.

"Tenet said earlier this month that the federal government was investigating its so-called "outlier" payments, which Medicare -- the federal health program for the elderly -- pays to defray costs of the most expensive cases....Redding Medical Center was fifth on the nurses group's list of Tenet hospitals in California charging highest drug charges. It marked up drugs 1,465 percent, the group said" Study: Tenet Charges Higher Drug Prices Than Other Hospitals. See also Pharmaceuticals, the Industry, and its Competition with Nurses, another subject within this study , an often unevaluated but major competitor to nurses in the hospital system [by diminishing the slice available to nurses, the primary employee of all the nations hospital at 70%]..
 

Who's in charge at Tenet Hospitals and What do They make?

• "Thomas B. Mackey, Tenet's chief operating officer, and David L. Dennis, chief financial officer... were dismissed last month. Neither responded to requests for comment.   A month before leaving, Mackey exercised $10 million in Tenet stock options. Barbakow this year  cashed in stock options worth $111 million, on top of his $5.5-million salary and bonus for fiscal  2002." Tenet's Aggressive Corporate Culture Fed   Crisis, Insiders Say The hospital operator's business practices, profit-based pay incentives come under scrutiny By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer. Dec 12 2002.
• The financial report of the corporation shows that for the three month period of  ended August 31, 2001 and 2002 , published Oct 2 2002  and showing  salaries and benefits costs is available online at Financial data for the Corporation is available Online, showing its worth, and its cost , including for Salaries and Benefits.

• Nurses working for Tenet have long complained about their salaries, patient care, and the use of Mandatory overtime. Letters from Tenet Nurses reporting their concerns leading to Strike from across the nation are also available on line. Use of Mandatory Overtime is frequently commented upon in those letters.
• The CEO of "San Ramon Regional Hospital resigned  after less than two years on the job. She is being replaced by a Tenet executive who's no stranger to controversy. Gary Sloan comes to San Ramon from nearby Doctors Medical Center, where nurses are striking and county officials are complaining about alleged price gouging. .... Last October,  San Ramon nurses voted to join an organized union that -- since the big blowup at Redding -- has emerged as one of Tenet's loudest critics. Within months, the union had found a headline-grabbing cause. San Ramon was  planning to bring pediatric patients into its medical/surgical unit. But it was not necessarily going to hire pediatric nurses to handle all their care. Instead, the hospital intended to train regular nurses -- in roughly seven hours -- how to treat sick children."All but seven of San Ramon's 42 medical/surgical nurses officially complained in a petition to the hospital CEO."It is not safe to have adult medical/surgical nurses, even on occasion, taking care of medically unstable pediatric patients without full pediatric training," they insisted."While Tenet claims it resolved the dispute, state  inspectors still cited San Ramon for failing to  conduct age-specific assessments of neonatal  and pediatric patients during a recent evaluation.  The nurses union immediately pounced on the  inspection results -- which cited widespread  violations -- to bolster its argument that Tenet cuts  too many corners and jeopardizes patient care. " From Stock News. Some Accuse Tenet of Skimping on Care  By Melissa Davis. 04/28/2003. Presented on TheStreet.com
• Tenet recently faced a nurses strike.
• "After years of bitter squabbling, Tenet Healthcare Corp. has reached a national labor agreement with its major nurses' unions that includes pay raises of up to 29 percent  over the next four years. ....Tenet has been under constant attack from the nurses' unions which have claimed the company's hospitals have too few nurses and require employees to operate in difficult working conditions. Tenet struck the deal while under investigation for overbilling Medicare; its stock has plunged 70 percent in the past year. " Tenet, nurse's union reach agreement. From  allnurses.com, Friday May 2, 2003