Tenet Facility to Resume Treating Heart Patients

Tenet Healthcare Corp. said Friday that its Redding Medical Center would resume treating heart patients, and named a new director for the facility’s troubled cardiac program.

The Santa Barbara-based company also appointed a new chief executive for the center in Redding, which had been one of Tenet’s most profitable hospitals because of an unusually high volume of heart procedures performed there.

Two weeks ago, Tenet agreed to pay $54 million to settle federal allegations that the hospital’s former cardiology chief, Chae Hyun Moon, and former chief cardiac surgeon, Fidel Realyvasquez, performed unneeded surgeries. The firm admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement.

Tenet’s acting chief executive, Trevor Fetter, told investors this month that the company was eager to rebuild its business at the Redding hospital, which suspended its cardiac program in April.

To that end, Tenet hired Satyendra Giri to run the hospital’s cardiovascular program. Giri was director of the interventional cardiology medicine division at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston.

Analysts said the hospital’s revamped program probably would be a scaled-down version of its predecessor. “Only time will tell if people will be willing to go there,” said Andreas Dirnagl of investment firm Harris Nesbitt Gerard.

The company’s shares rose 3 cents to $14.68 on the New York Stock Exchange. The Redding inquiry was among several that have engulfed the nation’s second-largest hospital operator in the last year. Government investigators are still looking into Tenet’s Medicare billing practices and the way some of its 114 hospitals recruit doctors.

Under the Justice Department settlement, Tenet isn’t liable for heart procedures performed at the hospital from 1997 through 2002. The agreement doesn’t cover private suits by patients. Moon, Realyvasquez and six other physicians face civil lawsuits brought on behalf of more than 400 former patients.

As part of the settlement, Tenet created the new job of director of medical affairs. That person will coordinate peer review and clinical activities at the hospital. The company also agreed to random reviews of cardiac procedures by physicians from outside Redding Medical Center.

Giri said those steps were consistent with the way many successful hospitals operated. “They allow you to have a system that identifies the areas that need to be strengthened,” he said.

Giri, 40, said his first task in Redding would be to rebuild trust with the 150,000 people in the community, about 200 miles north of Sacramento, as the hospital resumes its heart program. Tenet officials did not specify when that would be.

“We need to start slow, concentrate on quality and make sure that nothing compromises the standards we are trying to reach,” Giri said.

Tenet on Friday also named Candace Mark with, 54, as the Redding hospital’s new CEO. She has been serving as chief of the company’s 182-bed Suburban Medical Center in Paramount.

She replaces Hal Chilton, who was moved to a Tenet office in Orange County.