In the 60 Minutes report below, the heart surgeries were
scheduled, and in many cases performed on healthy
individuals with NO heart problems. This abuse came to the
surface through patients seeking other opinions, but
unfortunately not before 167 people died and hundreds more
received unnecessary surgery.
It is much more realistic for that to happen in colon
surgeries, the abuse is much more tricFL to recognize
and/or expose. With colon diseases, there is usually a way
to "rationalize" the surgery because there is almost always
some inflammations, tissue irregularity or other damage
which the doctor can identify.
The problem is that there is not any system of
accountability in place today.
We are taught to trust "the physician" or get a second
opinion, and in almost all cases the second and/or third
opinion can be as pro-surgery as the first.
It is a lack of knowledge about other alternatives for
treatment and a fear of lawsuits.
To state the evident, doctors are progressively more
finding ways to validate surgery in an effort to
accommodate the lack of compensation from the insurance
companies for little things as office visits.
Doctor's are too often interested in bottom line business
to explore other options for their patients. It is a fact
which the patients in most instances cannot bear to
comprehend.
(CBS) Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) tells Ed Bradley that
executives at the nation's second largest healthcare
company are "poster children for unethical business
practices" in this 60 Minutes report on one of the
company's California hospitals accused of performing
unnecessary heart surgeries. Bradley's report on Tenet
Health Systems' Redding Medical Center was broadcast on
Sunday, Feb. 16, 2003 at 7 p.m., ET.
Tenet hospitals have been the subjects of federal
proceedings in FL orida for patient endangerment and in
California for substantiation of illegal kickbacks to
doctors; the federal government is suing Tenet for
defrauding taxpayers. The FBI is now investigating Tenet's
Redding Medical Center, and two of the hospital's doctors
for purportedly recommending and performing avoidable heart
surgeries. Tenet says they first learned of the complaints
in October 2002, when the FBI raided the hospital and
confiscated thousands of files, including those of 167
patients who died after heart surgery.
Stark believes Tenet was aware of complaints about the
doctors before that day, as well as Dr. Chae Hyun Moon, who
ordered the alleged surgeries to be unwarranted, complaints
which were made for numerous years earlier to the FBI raid.
"When [Tenet] has documented charges by people who have
called [Moon's] practice to their attention time and time
again, when their own nurses...other physicians were
complaining," Stark tells Bradley, "It's pretty hard for
somebody to say, 'Gee, we didn't know what was going on.'"
Adds Stark, "These guys are the poster children for
unethical business practices."
Neither Tenet nor Moon agreed to participate in an
interview with 60 Minutes. In Sunday's report, Bradley
interviews three of Dr. Moon's patients whose
recommendations for heart bypass surgery were reversed by
other doctors. One of the patients, Dr. John Corapi, called
the FBI after numerous cardiac specialists told him the
bypass Dr. Moon ordered for him was unsubstantiated and
Tenet administrators at Redding Medical told him they
wouldn't investigate the claims. "I said...Investigate it.
There's something that's not quite right and they refused,"
Corapi tells Bradley. "And it just sticks in my memory, Hal
Chilton, the CEO, said over the phone...'We like our
position. Seek counsel if you like,'" Corapi says the CEO
told him.
----------------------------------------------------
This article was from an episode of CBS 60 Minutes in Feb.
2003. This and other articles can be found on our website
at http://www.doctorsaloe.com/60_minutes_article.htm
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