Sacred Heart turned patient trust in doctors 'upside down,' lawyer says

Patients should be able to trust that their doctors are making unbiased medical decisions, but administrators at a West Side hospital "turned that trust upside down" by doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks, a federal prosecutor told a jury Wednesday as a fraud trial got underway. "There was a secret behind the doors at Sacred Heart Hospital," Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur said in her opening statement. "The secret was that the most sacred thing at Sacred Heart was money." But attorneys for the three former administrators on trial told jurors that underlings were to blame for the misconduct, pointing the finger at two other former executives who are expected to be key witnesses for prosecutors.