Tenet Tangles With Locals on Cutback Plans

Tenet also laid out plans to shut Memorial's cardiac rehab program -- shown to have lower death rates among heart attack victims -- along with a unique fitness center utilized by hundreds of area residents. But an outraged public managed to save the latter program.

"People in wheelchairs and walkers use this fitness center," Elaine Modieste said in a December press release issued by the Community Health Councils. "It's not like going to the Y. ... This is the only place I can get care like this."

Days after the health council published its release, urging the state attorney general to intervene, Tenet dropped plans to close the fitness center and agreed to accommodate cardiac rehab patients at its booming hospital down the road.

Favored Few

For years, Tenet has been pumping huge sums of money into nearby Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood. State records show the company regularly spending millions -- sometimes in a single quarter -- on improvements at the facility.

But some insiders claim that Tenet's generosity doesn't end there. At least one local doctor claims that Tenet rewards Centinela's busiest physicians -- through paid directorships and lucrative relocation agreements -- as well.

"If you dig a little deeper, you'll see that these are little more than kickbacks," he said. "And the expectation of those doctors is: 'You better be doing a hell of a lot of procedures.'"

The doctor went on to say that a hospital administrator blew him off when he raised concerns about the favored physicians.

"I asked, 'Why are you crowning these guys kings? Their utilization is off the wall,'" the doctor stated. "And I was told: 'That's how Tenet likes to do things.'"

Tenet has already paid a record-breaking fine to settle allegations that the company profited from unnecessary surgeries, carried out by its busiest doctors, at Redding Medical Center in Northern California. It has also seen its Alvarado Hospital Medical Center in San Diego indicted for allegedly negotiating more than 100 doctor kickbacks since 1992. The hospital has pleaded innocent to the charges and is headed for trial in October.