Hospital Corporation of America vs. Tenet Healthcare
Heather Darling
22-BA-5080-002
Summer Semester, 2014

SUMMARY Hospital Corporation of America as of now is the biggest player in the hospital care sector. Headquarter in Nashville, TN HCA has been very aggressive in acquisitions and developing all around the United States and in England. They are very quick to turn down a deal with another hospital if they believe that it will not be a profitable deal. One of the things that HCA has done to improve profits that not many other companies have done is to send customers that are not profitable to neighboring public health hospitals. This has increased their profits as well as their wait times in emergency rooms. On the other hand, Tenet Healthcare Corporation is a competitor to HCA, but has been slower to develop in the profitable ways of HCA. Tenet has taken a diversification approach recently in the urgent care business. They have recently opened 23 urgent care facilities, the first company in the hospital sector to do so. Many competitors, including HCA, are waiting to see how TCA does before also going this route. As of now Tenet owns the market in urgent care facilities but as profits increase, other hospital companies may go this route as well. The deal Tenet made with Vanguard is the biggest transaction Tenet has made and signals a shift from the company's problems over the past 10 years. Several Tenet-owned facilities underwent investigations in the early 2000s for alleged unnecessary heart surgeries. In 2006, Tenet paid $900 million in cash and returned Medicare payments to settle claims it overbilled Medicare throughout the 1990s in one of the largest settlements ever recorded in the hospital sector. Tenet also went through a messy lawsuit with CHS a few years ago after CHS unsuccessfully attempted to take Tenet over. On the other hand HCA