A new company formed by two San Fernando Valley doctors has agreed to take Tenet Healthcare Corp.’s troubled Alvarado Hospital Medical Center in San Diego off its hands. That leaves the Dallas-based hospital chain only two California hospitals left to divest.

Sherman Oaks-based Plymouth Health, owned by brothers Dr. Pejman Salimpour and Dr. Pedram Salimpour, has agreed to pay Tenet around $36.5 million for the 306-bed community hospital, with the deal expected to close by Dec. 31.

Tenet agreed earlier this year to sell Alvarado Hospital as part of a civil settlement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to resolve allegations that physicians were being paid kickbacks to refer patients to Alvarado for treatment.

Under the purchase agreement, Plymouth Health has agreed to hire Alvarado Hospital employees who are in good standing. The Salimpours could not be reached for comment by press time. Plymouth is a subsidiary of Pedram Salimpour’s CareNex Health Services, a health care technology and client services organization. Pejman Salimpour is a practicing physician and president-elect of the Los Angeles County Medical Association, District 6.

Tenet has been selling off hospitals over the past two years following disclosures that the company, formerly based in Santa Barbara, propped up its earnings by taking advantage of a billing loophole in the Medicare system. Tenet, once the county’s leading hospital operator, plans to retain only four local hospitals, including USC University Hospital in Boyle Heights.

Tenet still has on the block a two-hospital unit in the San Fernando Valley, Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center, which it acquired in 1993. Structuring the sale has been difficult because a competing hospital owner, Hospital Corp. of America, had a minority interest in the Encino hospital. Tenet operates the hospitals in a joint venture that includes a REIT which owns the buildings and land.

After months of negotiation, Tenet in July bought out HCA’s share for $28 million and is continuing talks with potential buyers, according to a spokesman. Nashville-based HCA, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, was taken private last month in a management-led buyout.

Amgen Data Debate


Amgen Inc., skilled in using post-approval clinical studies to promote wider usage of its products, may get stung by a recent study that questions the safety of higher dosing for its flagship anemia treatment.

Thousand Oaks-based Amgen and Johnson & Johnson separately sell a red blood cell-boosting drug, known generically as epoetin, under the respective brand names Epogen and Procrit for treating anemia caused by kidney disease and chemotherapy. Worldwide sales of Amgen’s anemia line, which includes an extended-use version called Aranesp, are expected reach around $10 billion this year.

A New England Journal of Medicine study last month suggested that kidney patients who received higher does of epoetin than advised on the drug’s government-approved label were more likely to die or suffer heart problems than those receiving lower doses.

Though drug companies cannot market products for uses and doses beyond the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved label, physicians regularly experiment in both areas based on post-clinical studies, often company sponsored, that are published in medical journals or presented at professional meetings.

An expert panel of doctors for the National Kidney Foundation is expected to review its epoetin dosing guidelines early next year, based on the New England Journal study. The foundation’s guidelines encourage more aggressive treatment than FDA recommendations, and some doctors have suggested that Amgen had unduly influenced the panel in the past, an allegation the company denies.

The company said in a statement that while it does provide unrestricted medical education grants to groups like the foundation, Amgen itself promotes use of its drugs in accordance with FDA guidelines. The FDA issued a new dosing warning to doctors following the journal article.

This & That


Tenet’s USC University Hospital last week became the last downtown Los Angeles hospital to have its 500 registered nurses join the California Nurses Association. The RN’s voted by 61 percent to join the CNA, the state’s largest registered nurses association and one of the nation’s largest health care unions. CNA has aggressively targeted L.A. hospitals in recent years, with only one downtown hospital having unionized nurses a decade ago, according to a union spokesman.

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Adventist Health/Home Care Services, part of Glendale Adventist Medical Center, was named to the 2006 HomeCare Elite list, a ranking of the top 25 percent in home care services. The ranking was determined by quality of care, improvement and financial performance of the facilities. The list was compiled by Outcome Concept Systems Inc., a Seattle company that provides data products and benchmark services for home health, hospice and private duty agencies.

Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 232, or at

[email protected]

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