Tenet Conference Honored Success

In “Tenet’s Aggressive Corporate Culture Fed Crisis, Insiders Say� (Dec. 12), you described our national service excellence conference in Las Vegas in February as an “extravaganza.� But conspicuously absent was any mention of why we held the conference, who attended and what we were celebrating.

Tenet hospitals have a lot of progress to celebrate these days. As measured by extensive surveys, the satisfaction with our service is up significantly among our patients, physicians and employees. In the last two years, almost half our hospitals have achieved four- or five-star status for patient satisfaction. This is a new, higher standard that counts only those patients who rate themselves “very satisfied� with their experience at a Tenet hospital.

In addition, we have made significant progress in improving the satisfaction of our employees and making Tenet hospitals the preferred places to work in health care. The annual turnover rate for nurses at our facilities has gone from 27% three years ago to less than 21% today. In an industry that’s experiencing a severe and worsening shortage of nurses, that’s impressive.

The service excellence conference was a chance for 1,200 hospital employees from 113 hospitals across the country to come together to share their success stories and help their colleagues.

While all the attention is paid these days to Tenet’s billing practices and supposedly “aggressive corporate culture,� we’re proud to celebrate the very real accomplishments of our 114,000 employees who, day after day, make sure every patient in our hospitals gets great care and service.

Harry Anderson

Vice President

Tenet Healthcare Corp.

Santa Barbara