Tenet Healthcare CEO Announces Plans To Move Company Headquarters to Dallas
As expected, Tenet Healthcare CEO Trevor Fetter announced Thursday that the company within a year will move its corporate headquarters from Santa Barbara to Dallas, calling the move a "critical step" in an effort to cut costs and implement a "cultural change," the Dallas Morning News reports. Fetter told shareholders at the company's annual meeting in Dallas that the move is part of a series of "corrective measures [that] are working," the Morning News reports. According to the Morning News, critics and shareholders have long called for the move, saying that the Santa Barbara location "exemplifies a culture of excess" (Yu, Dallas Morning News, 5/6). Shareholders have complained about the costs of maintaining the California headquarters, as the company uses several personal jets to fly executives between Dallas, where Tenet's business operations are headquartered, and Santa Barbara. According to Fetter, some employees will not be offered positions in Dallas. Tenet, which recently reported its fifth consecutive quarterly loss and plans to shed a third of its 95 hospitals, has seen its stock fall more than 70% in the last 18 months (Vrana, Los Angeles Times, 5/6). According to Fetter, Tenet's "effectiveness as an organization will be enhanced if we have our corporate staff together in one central location" (Perotin, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 5/7). Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst with New York-based Fulcrum Global Partners, said the move "makes a lot of sense from an informational flow purpose," adding, "I don't know that it means a new start for them. But it shows that Fetter and his team are capable of big changes" (Los Angeles Times, 5/6).
"We are fixing a broken company," Fetter said, noting other initiatives the company has undertaken over the past 18 months to "reinvent Tenet from the patient's bedside to the nurse's station to the chief executive office." Fetter reminded shareholders of some recent quality control efforts, such as the company's reducing Medicare outlier payments; renegotiating all managed care contracts; placing a compliance officer at all hospitals; and requiring all employees, including all executives, to take a revised ethics course this year (Dallas Morning News, 5/6).
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