Whistleblower Wants Tenet to Come Clean

Looking for a "crystal-clear environment where none of this funny business goes on," Rosen has since left the for-profit hospital to practice and teach in a university setting. But his stomach never really settled after his experience with Tenet. He believes that patients have needlessly suffered -- and even died -- because of a corporate business model that's "incompatible with good health care."

Tenet focuses on "the bottom line, regardless of what is good for the patients," he said.

Tenet -- which vowed this week to adopt a "relentless emphasis on quality" going forward -- did not return messages seeking comment for this story. The company's shares, which have lost more than three-quarters of their value over the last year as the company's practices have come under government investigation, dropped 23 cents Thursday, to $11.98.

Red Flags

Peter Young, a business consultant for HealthCare Strategic Issues, stumbled across Tenet's unusual business model about a year after Rosen severed ties with the giant hospital chain.

Young, who counts hospitals among his diverse base of clients, was struck by the company's boasts about its hospital in the relatively small community of Redding, Calif. In a conference call with analysts, Young recalls, Tenet pointed to the Redding facility as a booming heart center that could serve as a model for the rest of the Tenet system. Immediately intrigued, Young began digging for reasons behind Redding's extraordinary success.

"Good grief is there pork fat in the water of Redding!" Young declared, explaining that the colorful phrase "is a hospital industry joke when one hospital notes a significant jump in heart business of a competitor that goes beyond a statistical mean."

Since then, Redding has come under fire for allegedly performing unnecessary heart surgeries and billing Medicare for some of the especially lucrative procedures. Plaintiffs' attorneys, representing sick patients and grieving survivors, say Redding was the most profitable hospital in Tenet's entire 114-facility chain before federal investigators began sniffing around last fall. But the hospital's most productive heart surgeons -- stung by a federal raid -- have since stopped practicing. And the once-bustling heart center has shut down because of a sharp drop-off in business.