Relocation Plea Bargain
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7.1.05 at 1315 | # |
San Diego hospital administrator reaches plea deal in Tenet trial | SF Chronicle | 1.5.05
The former associate administrator of a San Diego hospital owned by a subsidiary of Tenet Healthcare Corp. has reached a deal to plead guilty to a charge of conspiracy, the company announced Wednesday.
Mina Nazaryan reached a plea bargain with prosecutors during an ongoing trial into alleged kickbacks at the hospital, Tenet said in a statement. Prosecutors accused Nazaryan of taking money for arranging relocation agreements for doctors at Alvarado Hospital Medical Center and obstructing investigators looking into the matter. …
Hospitals routinely recruit doctors to their service areas and often offer incentives, including guaranteeing salary for up to three years and paying relocation expenses.
Federal laws require that such payments benefit only the recruited doctor and that hospitals cannot require doctors to refer patients on an exclusive basis. …
Tenet Ex-Exec Pleads Guilty in Referral Case | LAT | 1.6.05
A former Tenet Healthcare Corp. hospital executive has agreed to plead guilty to a single count of criminal conspiracy, the company said Wednesday, making a deal in the midst of her trial on charges that she helped arrange kickbacks to persuade doctors to refer patients to Alvarado Medical Center.
Mina Nazaryan, Alvarado’s physician recruiter, had been indicted on several counts of conspiracy and other crimes and faced the possibility of more than 10 years in prison. With the plea deal, Nazaryan’s sentence could be five years or fewer, according to legal experts following the trial in federal court in San Diego. …
“You have to believe that what she offered the government was substantial because they gave her a very good deal in return,” said George B. Newhouse, a former assistant U.S. attorney and now a defense lawyer at Thelen Reid & Priest in Los Angeles. …
Nazaryan was in charge of the hospital’s physician recruitment contracts. Prosecutors contend that Alvarado used them to cover up as much as $15 million in kickbacks to 99 physicians. The payments, the prosecutors say, were meant to induce the doctors to send patients to the facility over a 13-year period. …
Tenet Ex-Official Pleads Guilty In Kickback Case | WSJ | 1.6.05
…Prosecutors have accused all of the defendants of using illegal physician relocation agreements to bribe doctors to induce their referrals to the hospital. Relocation agreements are commonly used to draw doctors to communities suffering from physician shortages, but hospitals aren’t allowed to pay doctors directly for referrals under the antikickback statute governing federal health-care programs. …
With this plea, Tenet and Alvarado’s former CEO (Weinbaum) are left holding a growing bag…
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