Shasta Regional Medical Center
Shasta Regional Medical Center, formerly known as Redding Medical Center, is one of two major hospitals that are located in Redding, California. It opened in 1945 and currently has 246 beds with an acute care facility and has become a regional medical center serving far Northern California. It is also the first fully accredited chest pain center in northern California.
It was purchased by Tenet Healthcare Corporation in 1976 and renamed Redding Medical Center. In 2002, amid a federal investigation of two cardiologists at the hospital, Drs. Chae Hyun Moon and Fidel Realyvasquez, and as part of a settlement with federal regulators, Tenet Healthcare Corporation was compelled to sell the hospital to Hospital Partners of America for $60 million USD in 2004. Hospital Partners of America then renamed the hospital to its current name of Shasta Regional Medical Center and took measures to ensure that this incident would not occur in the future.
Hospital Partners of America went into bankruptcy in 2008, and the hospital operations were taken over by Prime Healthcare Services.
Shasta Regional is the only hospital in Shasta County certified as a Chest Pain Center and became a Primary Stroke Center for the region in 2006. It was the first hospital in California and 11th in the nation to be certified as an Advanced Inpatient Diabetes Care hospital in 2010 by The Joint Commission.
The hospital was named as a "Top Performer on Key Quality Measures" by The Joint Commission based on care and patient outcomes for Heart Attack, Heart Failure, Pneumonia and Surgical Care in 2010.
At Redding, the early-2000s investigation, raid and litigation were prompted because "physicians undertook large volumes of inappropriate and unnecessary procedures on largely healthy patients". The investigation into Moon and Realyvasquez was the result of multiple whistleblower lawsuits filed under the Federal False Claims Act alleging unnecessary medical procedures. Catholic Priest John Corapi, Joseph Zerga and Redding physician Patrick Campbell split 15% of the total $62.55 million settlement.
Tenet had already agreed to pay $54 million in 2003 to settle the federal case without admitting any wrongdoing but with an agreement for new oversight procedures for physicians and staff. In 2004, Tenet established a $395 million fund for 769 cardiac patients to settle civil suits relating to procedures performed by Moon and Realyvasquez.
There is also evidence that Prime Healthcare Services engages in upcoding elderly patients to malnutrition. At Shasta Regional Medical Center, Prime reported 16.1% of their Medicare patients suffered from kwashiorkor. The state of California average for Medicare patients is 0.2% suffering from kwashiorkor. Prime Healthcare Services is currently being investigated for Medicare fraud by United States Department of Health and Human Services and the California Department of Justice.
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