U.S. awards Tenet whistle-blowers $8.1 million

Home Health Columnist / Guide · Jan 10, 2004

NY Times January 8, 2004

U.S. Awards Tenet Whistle-Blowers $8.1 Million

By KURT EICHENWALD

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/business/08care.html

Federal prosecutors announced yesterday that the government had awarded $8.1 million to two men who filed the first whistle-blower suit contending that unnecessary cardiac procedures were being performed at a California hospital owned by Tenet Healthcare.

The payment comes after a $54 million settlement reached last year between the government and Tenet over accusations that doctors at the company's Redding Medical Center had subjected possibly hundreds of relatively healthy patients to unnecessary heart tests and operations.

The investigation of Redding was disclosed in the fall of 2002, when federal agents raided the hospital and the offices of Dr. Chae Hyun Moon and Dr. Fidel Realyvasquez. Dr. Moon was chief of Redding's cardiology department; Dr. Realyvasquez was its top cardiac surgeon. Both men remain under investigation.

The two men who received the multimillion-dollar payment from the government were the Rev. Joseph Corapi, 56, and Joseph Zerga, 61. Father Corapi, a Catholic priest, was a patient of Dr. Moon; he was told in 2001 that he had a life-threatening cardiac condition that required immediate surgery.

Father Corapi consulted Mr. Zerga, a friend in Las Vegas who persuaded him to have the surgery in Nevada. But after Father Corapi arrived, doctors informed him that he did not have heart trouble. The two men returned to Redding and confronted hospital administrators, who maintained that Father Corapi indeed had a heart problem.

Mr. Zerga, an accountant, contacted the F.B.I. The two men subsequently learned about the False Claims Act, better known as the federal whistle-blower law. Under that law, private citizens are able to bring suits on behalf of the United States when federal programs are defrauded. The two men filed suit, contending that Redding was cheating Medicare.

Mr. Zerga said yesterday that he had not yet given much thought to his financial windfall, saying that "what's important is that this nightmare in Redding is over."

Michael A. Hirst, the assistant United States attorney in Sacramento who handled the case, also had praise for the two whistle-blowers.

"We are pleased to provide Mr. Corapi and Mr. Zerga with their statutory award for coming forward," Mr. Hirst said. "Their willingness to blow the whistle on fraud resulted in our putting a stop to the surgeries and recovering $54 million."