Former Heart Patients Sue Tenet

Attorneys for 366 former patients of Tenet Healthcare Corp.’s hospital in Redding sued the company and eight doctors Friday, accusing them of performing unnecessary heart surgeries to boost profit.

The lawsuit claims that Redding Medical Center’s chief cardiologist and its top cardiac surgeon -- Chae Hyun Moon and Fidel Realyvasquez -- joined a half-dozen associates in defrauding people who needlessly went under the knife.

Moon and Realyvasquez are defendants in more than 100 other lawsuits, filed after federal investigators raided Redding Medical last fall and accused the two of performing needless procedures on healthy patients.

The suit in Shasta County Superior Court accuses Tenet, its hospital and the doctors of fraud, negligence, battery and elder abuse.

Tenet officials said they could not comment because they had not seen the complaint, which runs 247 pages.

It was filed a week after Santa Barbara-based Tenet agreed to pay $54 million to resolve government allegations of fraud at Redding Medical.

The settlement, in which Tenet admitted no wrongdoing, ended the government’s criminal and civil probes into the company and its Redding hospital, although prosecutors are investigating individuals involved in the alleged fraud.

Of the 366 former patients, 51 are deceased. The suit attributes some of their deaths specifically to procedures performed by doctors at Redding Medical.

The defendants “have caused death and devastation to the families of these victims,” said Russ Reiner, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs.

Among them is country music legend Merle Haggard, who in 1997 had a pair of heart stents put in by Moon. In a November interview with The Times, Haggard, 66, said he underwent the treatment at Moon’s behest and later suspected he didn’t need the operation.

Reiner said it took months to interview patients and their families, compile their medical records and in some cases send them for independent reviews to doctors at other institutions, including Stanford University.

The lawsuit claims that some doctors at Redding Medical warned hospital administrators in 1997 that they believed some heart surgeries performed at the facility weren’t medically necessary. Those doctors called for an audit of heart procedures, the suit said, but their concerns were ignored while the pace of cardiac procedures at the hospital accelerated.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for past and future medical costs, lost wages, pain and suffering and physical scarring.

Punitive damages also are being sought, Reiner said.

The defendants in the case intentionally misrepresented the physical conditions of the plaintiffs and concealed the truth, the complaint said. Tenet and its subsidiaries are accused of aiding and abetting the scheme and of giving “substantial assistance” and encouragement to the doctors to perform the surgeries.

The defendants, in addition to Moon and Realyvasquez, are: Ricardo Moreno-Cabral; Kent Brusett and Kevin Miller, described in the court papers as associates of Realyvasquez at Cardiac, Thoracic & Vascular Surgery Medical Group; and Thomas Russ, Walter Fletscher and B.V. Chandramouli, partners of Moon at Cardiology Associates of Northern California.

All the defendants except Moon are practicing; Moon’s medical malpractice insurance ran out earlier this year.

Attempts to reach the doctors Friday were unsuccessful. Telephone calls to the two medical practices reached either an answering service or a taped message saying that the offices were regularly closed on Friday afternoons.

The filing of the suit was another blow for Tenet, the second-largest hospital chain in the U.S. In Florida, state officials recently started investigating the chain for possible Medicaid fraud.

Since autumn, when federal investigators began a probe of the company’s Medicare billing practices, Tenet’s stock has lost more than 72% of its value. Medicare officials have accused the company of collecting inappropriately large amounts of so-called outlier reimbursements for the sickest patients.

Tenet shares closed Friday at $14.28, down 21 cents, on the New York Stock Exchange.