U.S. awards Tenet whistleblowers $8.1 million

Healthcare Purchasing News, Feb, 2004

Federal prosecutors announced that the government had awarded $8.1 million to two men who filed the first whistle-blower suit contending that unnecessary cardiac procedures were being performed at a California hospital owned by Tenet Healthcare. The payment comes after a $54 million settlement reached last year between the government and Tenet over accusations that doctors at the company's Redding Medical Center had subjected possibly hundreds of relatively healthy patients to unnecessary heart tests and operations.

The two men who received the multimillion-dollar payment from the government were the Rev. Joseph Corapi, 56, and Joseph Zerga, 61. Father Corapi, a Catholic priest, was a patient who was told in 2(R)I that he had a life-threatening cardiac condition that required immediate surgery. Father Corapi consulted Mr. Zerga, a friend in Las Vegas who persuaded him to have dm surgery in Nevada where doctors there informed him that he did not have heart trouble. The two men returned to Redding and confronted hospital administrators, who maintained that Father Corapi indeed had a heart problem. Mr. Zerga, an accountant, contacted the F.B.I. The two men subsequently learned about the False Claims Act, better known as the federal whistle-blower law. Under that law, private citizens are able to bring suits on behalf of the United States when federal programs are defrauded.