Redding Medical Center To Resume Cardiac Program
Tenet officials on Aug. 22 announced that Tenet-owned Redding Medical Center will resume a cardiac program suspended in April, the AP/San Jose Mercury News reports (AP/San Jose Mercury News, 8/24). Tenet officials also named a new director for the cardiac program, Satyendra Giri, former director of the interventional cardiology medicine division at University of Texas Medical School in Houston, and a new Redding CEO, Candace Mark, who had served as CEO of Tenet-owned Suburban Medical Center in Paramount, Calif. (White, Los Angeles Times, 8/23). Tenet officials made the announcements after the company on Aug. 6 agreed to pay $54 million to settle allegations that Dr. Chae Hyun Moon, the former chief cardiologist at Redding, and Dr. Fidel Realyvasquez, a cardiac surgeon at the facility, performed unnecessary heart surgeries and defrauded Medicare. Under the settlement, Tenet did not admit wrongdoing but agreed to implement new procedures at Redding. The settlement ends civil and criminal investigations into Tenet, subsidiary Tenet HealthSystems Hospitals and Redding. However, federal investigations into the involvement of individuals in the alleged Medicare fraud at Redding will continue; Tenet officials agreed to cooperate with the investigations (California Healthline, 8/18).
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