HCA

Last edited by Ian Elwood on July 11, 2008 - 3:18pm

Company Snapshot:

The Hospital Corporation of America (HCA, formerly Columbia/HCA) is the largest for-profit hospital chain in the United States, owning some 169 hospitals and 100 freestanding (ambulatory) surgery centers in 20 states and six hospitals in the UK. In 2006 a group of investors took the company private in a $30 billion leveraged buyout, at the time the largest in U.S. history.

Ownership status:

Privately held

Number of employees worldwide:

161,000

Chief executive officer:

Jack O. Bovender, Jr.

2008 Global Fortune 500 rank:

299

Website:

HCA

Tel:

615-344-9551

Corporate accountability

Labor:

HCA owns its own temp agency, from which it outsources union jobs. Union activists say HCA has increasingly relied on community volunteers to perform tasks that were once done by union employees.

Political influence:

When asked in 2004 whether America could afford universal health care, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN), brother and son of the founders of HCA responded that universal coverage was "impossible." (NYTimes 2/7/04).

A year later Frist sold his HCA stock before its price plummeted, a move that precipitated an SEC investigation. Frist claimed the the stock was in a "totally blind" trust, but Washington Post reporters revealed that trustees of the "blind" trust had contacted Frist over a dozen times about his HCA holdings before he sold them. (Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, "Letters Show Frist Notified Of Stocks in 'Blind' Trusts Documents Contradict Comments on Holdings," WPost, October 24, 2005; Page A01).

To learn more about how former Senator Frist's career helped HCA, see Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

After retiring in early 2007, Frist announced that he would lead a drive by the charity Save the Children to make the preventable deaths of millions of children in the developing world an issue for Americans.

Health Care Fraud

HCA Inc. executives Jay A. Jarrell (former chief executive officer of HCA's southwest Florida division) and Robert W. Whiteside (former director of reimbursement) were convicted in July 1999 on six fraud counts each related to almost $3 million in reimbursements. On 2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta reversed the convictions. According to the New York Times (3/25/02), "the three-judge panel said the federal government failed to prove Mr. Jarrell and Mr. Whiteside had knowingly and willfully made false statements in reports to Medicare." HCA also paid $840 million in fines and penalties to settle related criminal charges and most civil allegations against the company.

The original trial focused on annual reports submitted to Medicare by HCA's Fawcett Memorial Hospital in Port Charlotte, Fla. The government said the executives defrauded Medicare of almost $3 million by inflating the amount of interest expense reimbursed by the government health-insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

Location(s)

HCA Headquarters

1 Park Plaza

Nashville, TN, 37203

United States

See map: Google Maps

History

Dr. Thomas Frist, Sr. and a group of physicians built Park View Hospital in Nashville, TN in the 1960s. By1968, Dr. Frist, Jack C. Massey and Dr. Thomas Frist, Jr. formed their own hospital management company -- Hospital Corporation of America -- aka HCA. The company went public in 1969. In 2006, it was taken private by a group of investors.

Financial information

Stock ticker symbol:

N/A

Total revenue:

25,477.00

Fiscal year:

2007

Fiscal year:

2007

Link to annual report:

Annual Reports web page