National hospital chain Tenet Healthcare is considering replacing local independent doctor groups with a large national physician staffing company at some or all of its 12 California facilities. Doctors in Orange County and across the state fret that bringing in an entirely new group from out of state to manage three different sets of physicians could disrupt established relationships between them and their hospitals and usher in a new era of penny pinching that would reduce staff levels and doctors' pay. Earlier this year, Tenet notified medical staff at its California hospitals that it was thinking about terminating current contracts with emergency room, anesthesiologist and hospital specialty doctor groups in order to bring in a single company that could provide physicians for all of those functions.
