Tenet Hospital Vows to Fight Fla. AG’s Claim it Improperly Took $1 Billion

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist has filed a lawsuit in Miami Federal Court alleging that the Tenet Hospital chain inflated its Medicare charges and improperly took more than $1 billion that could have been used by public hospitals.

Tenet spokesman Steven Campanini issued a terse statement this afternoon: “This appears to be a lawsuit motivated by a number of our Florida competitors and critics. It is specious and unwarranted. We will vigorously defend ourselves against these charges.”

The complaint charges that Tenet hospitals nationwide engaged in a racketeering scheme that removed funds from the Outlier Pool that public hospitals could have used.

”The long and short of it is they lied, they cheated, and they stole from the people,” Crist said in a Miami press conference.

Among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the North and South Broward County hospital districts and the Public Health Trust, which represents the Jackson Memorial Hospital system in Miami.