The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #93084   Message #1786868
Posted By: SharonA
18-Jul-06 - 10:47 PM
Thread Name: BS: Katrina Euthanasia
Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia
I for one believe Texas Guest. In the Philadelphia PA area, at least, Tenet has a reputation for taking over hospitals that are in financial difficulties, sucking them even drier, and then either closing them or selling them off. Here's a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about how they overbilled Medicare and, as a result, are closing 11 hospitals nationwide. Here's an excerpt:

Tenet's hospitals here have struggled financially since the company was discovered to be collecting large sums from Medicare in so-called outlier payments.

Medicare made those special payments to compensate hospitals for treating the sickest and costliest patients. But the regulations for how the payments were calculated allowed hospitals to artificially boost revenue by raising charges for services.

Tenet hospitals collected more than $700 million in such payments in 2002, including $108 million by its hospitals here.

Once the payments were ended, Tenet's area hospitals began losing money.