CT Health Care Consumers Should Breathe A Sigh of Relief

[N'Zinga Shani]

Tenet Healthcare Corporation has given up (for now) on its bid to buy 5 Connecticut hospitals.  As advocates for health care consumers, we are pleased that the Office of the State Attorney General did not rollover and allow Tenet to have its way.

 “Tenet Healthcare Corporation is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned (for-profit) healthcare services companies. Our subsidiaries operate hospitals, outpatient centers and health plans in 16 states, as well as Conifer Health Solutions, which provides healthcare business process services to hospital and other clients nationwide.”

We fully appreciate that every hospital (every business) must operate at a profit to remain viable.  Yale certainly makes a tidy profit; that is essential; buildings and facilities must be maintained and updated; employees must get incentives to stay in their jobs and to grow professionally.  However, a good operating profit and a big return on investment for the investors-- at the expense of health care consumers-- are two different matters completely.  Yale forming a business partnership with Tenet also raises questions.

Whether we have employer provided health insurance or we buy our own through the marketplace, when Tenet moves into a state health care delivery is affected and not necessarily for the better.

Read the statement put out by Tenet on Dec. 11, 2014.  CT does not seem to be a state where they can make enough money for their investors.  That is a good thing for consumers.

"For more than two years, Tenet Healthcare and our predecessor, Vanguard Health Systems, have worked with our partner, Yale-New Haven Health System, as well as elected officials and community leaders in Waterbury, Bristol, Manchester and Rockville to secure the continued availability of high-quality, affordable local hospital care for residents of those communities. 

 We respect the role the state regulators have in providing guidance and oversight to the healthcare industry, and understand the responsibility they take in discharging their duties.  Nonetheless, the extensive list of proposed conditions to be imposed on the Waterbury Hospital transaction, which is only the first of four transactions for which we’ve made applications, has led us to conclude that the approach to regulatory oversight in Connecticut would not enable Tenet to operate the hospitals successfully for the benefit of all stakeholders."

 http://investor.tenethealth.com/press-release/acquisition-and-devel...

 “Despite the hospital's precarious financial position, the state House Speaker said he would not support a taxpayer-funded bailout of Waterbury Hospital if it came to that point in the future.”  “ …The apparent end of the Tenet Healthcare deal may be good news to those who feared what a national chain getting a foothold in Connecticut might mean for patient care and employment levels, but the underlying economic challenges that have dogged Waterbury and St. Mary's hospitals for a decade are far from over.”

http://www.courant.com/health/hc-tenet-healthcare-waterbury-future-...

 Read more at all the links and in the NH Register here: http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20141211/tenet-withdraws-pla...