Tenet Healthcare CEO Profiled
The Wall Street Journal on Monday profiled Tenet Healthcare CEO Trevor Fetter, who "inherited a financial and legal morass in 2003" when he took the position and who seeks to "restore Tenet's reputation and upgrade cash-starved facilities."
Last week, Tenet agreed to pay $725 million to settle a Department of Justice investigation over allegations of inflated Medicare outlier payments and other investigations. The "long-running saga ... cast a pall on Tenet's future," and the number of Tenet hospitals in recent years has decreased by 40% to 68, as the company has sold many facilities that benefited from the alleged inflated payments, the Journal reports.
In addition, because Tenet had reserved funds to prepare for an expected settlement with DOJ, many hospitals "languished" and currently "lack the latest CT scanners and other high-tech equipment that doctors crave," according to the Journal. The "biggest challenge" for Fetter "will be to persuade doctors to send more patients to Tenet hospitals," the Journal reports.
Fetter has sought to address the issue through both culture change and operations improvements at Tenet hospitals, with a focus on quality of care. Fetter said, "The table is set if we can get patients to come in" (Rundle, Wall Street Journal, 7/3).