More Tenet troubles...

[NMAguiar]

The HMO continues their slide. Besides the Wall Street Journal, the following two newspapers carried stories today:

Tenet -- Shares in troubled Tenet Healthcare Corp. continued to tumble Monday, dragging down related stocks amid fears that a general crackdown on Medicare fraud will penalize the entire hospital industry. The Santa Barbara hospital chain, which has been under fire for possibly performing unnecessary operations and charging the federally funded Medicare program, saw its shares lose another 90 cents to close at $14 Monday, a 52- week low.

"San Francisco Chronicle" 11/12/02

More Tenet questions -- Mr. Barbakow, Tenet's 58-year-old chairman and chief executive, is in danger of losing the trust among investors that he and his management team have so carefully built up over the years. Tenet, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., faces a series of government inquiries that call of memories of its troubled past. The inquiries are raising concerns about whether Tenet was too aggressive in raising prices and whether its quest for profits threatens its quality of care.

"New York Times" 11/12/02

Both stories can be found

here.

[Youda]

>>>

If this wasn't so sad and true, I'd be rolling on the floor laughing. Well, DUH! Hasn't everyone been saying this? Like it's confined to Tenet?

[oramar]

All those same investors who gleefully invested in Tenet based on bottom line alone are now howling foul play.

[Youda]

This may be too blunt. But I'm going to say it anway, and I've said it before.

As long as people are dying because of short-staffing, then the investor dividend checks are nothing but blood money. These corps say they need the investors to stay open, but they don't use it to stay open: they use the money to build new wings that they can't staff, to buy out another hospital, to pad their "liability accounts," and pay for a platoon of attornies and accountants, make huge campaign contributions . . . Blood Money.

[abrenrn]

Youda, don't forget the big bucks they pay consultants to help them save money. The last batch all told hospitals the same thing. Stop paying for all those nurses, used cheaper labor. And so, the current engineered nursing shortage.