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Tenet Taps Delray Medical CEO to Oversee Palm Beach County

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 April 2006, 09:01 CDT

By Phil Galewitz, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

Apr. 12--Tenet Healthcare Corp. on Tuesday named longtime Delray Medical Center CEO Mitch Feldman to oversee the company's Palm Beach County operations.

Dallas-based Tenet owns five general hospitals in Palm Beach County, making it the county's largest hospital operator. It also owns Pinecrest Rehabilitation Hospital in Delray Beach. Tenet, the nation's second-largest hospital chain, has more than 5,300 employees in the county.

With the Feldman appointment as market vice president for Palm Beach County, Tenet has divided its South Florida operations in half. Feldman will be in charge of Palm Beach County and Northridge Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, and Ralph Aleman will be in charge of Tenet's Miami-Dade and other Broward hospitals.

Don Steigman, who had headed all of Tenet's South Florida operations since 1994, will focus on special projects for the company.

Feldman, 53, has been chief executive officer of Delray Medical for the past decade. He currently is vice chairman of the Emergency Department Management Group, a local task force trying to devise solutions to the lack of emergency room specialists in Palm Beach County.

"The purpose of the change is to have more hands-on management," Feldman said. "We want to make management more responsive."

Palm Beach County was a cash cow for Tenet for many years, but several of its hospitals here have struggled financially in recent years.

In addition to Delray Medical and Pinecrest, Tenet owns Good Samaritan and St. Mary's medical centers in West Palm Beach, and Palm Beach Gardens and West Boca medical centers. Delray and Palm Beach Gardens medical centers will face new competition for open-heart surgery care in the next two years when three area hospitals begin offering the lucrative service.

Tenet, which has faced numerous legal and quality-of-care issues in the past three years, is trying to settle a federal investigation into its Medicare billing practices.

Feldman says he plans to meet doctors and board members from the other Tenet hospitals over the next few weeks. He will immediately begin a search for his successor as CEO at Delray Medical Center.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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THC,

Source: The Palm Beach Post

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