Priest’s Heart ‘Trauma’ Triggers Tenet Probe

There came a moment, as Father John Corapi tried to absorb the stunning prospect of immediate triple bypass surgery, when a technician at Redding Medical Center questioned the priest about where his parish was located.

“I don’t have a parish,” Corapi recalls replying.

“What do you do then?” the technician asked.

“I’m a lecturer in medical ethics,” Corapi said.

But since his visit last June to the Tenet Healthcare Corp. facility, Corapi has turned into more than just a lecturer. He has become a medical-industry whistle-blower -- triggering a federal investigation into whether doctors at Redding Medical Center have been steering patients into heart surgeries they haven’t really needed.

“I was scrambling to draw up a will,” Corapi recounted in an interview here late Sunday night. “It was a traumatic experience.”

Eventually, after the 55-year-old Corapi developed suspicions about his diagnosis by Redding’s Dr. Chae Moon, he took his concerns to his health insurer, to the California Medical Board and eventually to the FBI.

Last Wednesday, the FBI raided the medical center and the offices of Moon, as well as those of his colleague, Dr. Fidel Realyvasquez. Investigators are looking into whether the two doctors have performed numerous unnecessary heart procedures on Medicare patients since at least 1998.

The doctors have not been charged with anything, and a lawyer for one of them has characterized the probe as a dispute between physicians and insurers over what constitutes proper medical care.

Meanwhile, officials at Santa Barbara-based Tenet on Monday stepped up efforts to reassure investors they are taking the matter seriously, saying they have hired a national medical consultant to review the allegations against Moon and Realyvasquez. Tenet said Mercer Consulting Group also will review any future procedures the two doctors intend to perform at the hospital.

In addition, the company said it has dispatched a team of internal experts to Redding to examine all aspects of the hospital’s high-volume cardiology department. The 238-bed hospital reported performing 923 open-heart surgeries and more than 16,000 catheterizations in the 12 months ended May 31, 2001, according to the latest annual disclosure report filed with California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.

Tenet added that the company plans to extend its internal review to other hospitals that have a high volume of specialized services, such as cardiology and neurology. The company has been pursuing a strategy to build up these programs, and some analysts have questioned whether that may have fostered a culture of aggressively treating patients at Redding and other hospitals. By handling more critical and complicated cases, Tenet has received an unusually large share of special Medicare reimbursements, which also have come under scrutiny.

Tenet’s stock jumped 9% early Monday morning, in part reflecting the company’s long conference call with investors Friday, but by day’s end shares closed up just 50 cents, or 2%, to $27 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Also Monday, Tenet was hit with two class-action investor lawsuits, one on each coast. The law firm Milberg Weiss said it filed a suit in California accusing Tenet officers of misrepresenting the company’s finances. Wolf Popper LLP, in a complaint brought in New York, accused Tenet of securities fraud, saying that the company knew about the federal raid at Redding on Wednesday but failed to disclose the information until the next day.

In Corapi’s case, rather than agree to the immediate bypass surgery recommend by Moon, he called to seek the advice of a friend in Nevada who had convinced him to have his heart checked out in the first place. The friend suggested that he come to Nevada to have the surgery. He went to a cardiologist in Las Vegas, expecting to soon land on the operating table.

“My father had a history of cardiovascular problems, so I went to confession,” Corapi said. “I wasn’t taking any chances.”

But the cardiologist told him something unexpected: He was fine.

In time, four other Las Vegas cardiologists concurred that there was nothing wrong with his heart and that he did not require a bypass operation. All of the Nevada doctors reviewed the results of tests performed by Moon.

Corapi said that he asked the Nevada doctors if it could have been a simple mistake by Moon or a difference in judgment. The answer he received, he recounted, chilled him: He was told there was no way to look at his tests and legitimately conclude that he needed immediate surgery.

“This was black and white,” Corapi said. “It wasn’t an error.”

Armed with the far different conclusion of the Nevada doctors, Corapi returned to Redding Medical Center looking for answers and an explanation. What he says he got from the medical center’s Chief Executive, Hal Chilton, was a strong defense of Moon’s diagnosis and another hard sell that he needed the surgery and could be accommodated that very afternoon.

Corapi said that he returned to Nevada again seeking the reassurance of his doctors there, and they again confirmed that surgery was unnecessary. Corapi said that he again contacted Chilton by telephone and that Redding officials again tried to convince him that the surgery was needed.

Chilton, contacted at his home Saturday night, would not comment and referred questions to Tenet.

A Tenet spokesman confirmed that Moon conducted a coronary angiogram and an ultrasound test on Corapi, and that Redding officials met with the priest more than once to recommend surgery.

Spokesman Harry Anderson said Monday that Moon is an expert at reading and interpreting ultrasounds, suggesting that the Nevada doctors are not.

“How often have those doctors performed that test? How many have they read?” Anderson asked, adding that hospital officials might have referred the matter for a further examination if another cardiologist they interviewed had not concurred with Moon’s analysis.

Moon’s attorney, John Reese Jr., did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Corapi’s lawyer, Dugan Barr, and another Redding attorney, Russ Reiner, said their law offices separately had been interviewing several dozen people who had been operated on by Moon or Realyvasquez.

Both lawyers said they were about to begin the long process of having each case reviewed by independent cardiologists to see whether the surgeries had been medically necessary.

Barr said that he probably would consult with several cardiologists, adding that those who had contacted him seemed to indicate that “if you went into that [emergency room] complaining about pain anywhere from your chest to your abdomen they would try to do” a heart examination “on you.”

Said Reiner: “We’ve already talked to between 50 and 60 former patients who are from all over California and some are from as far away as Utah and Nevada.”

Reiner added that some of the people coming forward seem to be fit 47- to 52-year-olds who watch their diets, exercise and possess few bad health habits.

Corapi, for his part, runs three miles at a clip several times a week. “I came within minutes of having a triple bypass,” he marveled, “and all the other doctors said this was not even a close call.”

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Times staff writer Don Lee contributed to this report.