Two California doctors who were charged with criminal fraud in performing unnecessary heart surgeries at a hospital formerly owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. have agreed to an unusual settlement that resolves the criminal charges and includes a settlement of related civil litigation that provides $32.5 million in payments to patients and federal insurance programs. The investigation included a highly publicized raid of the hospital, which Tenet eventually sold under the threat of losing access to the Medicare program.
As a part of the unusual deal, the doctors who were charged agreed to pay $1.4 million each and consented never to perform any cardiology procedures or surgeries on any patient covered by various government insurance programs, including Medicare. Nevertheless, neither of the docs admitted liability and one of them commented that the reason he settled was that he could not “continue to fight a system that is not interested in the truth.”