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In business courts doctors say hospital endangered patients to turn a profit By J. Patrick Coolican staff writer Two former St. Rose Dominican Hospital emergency room doctors say they were forced to transfer patients from one St. Rose hospital to another so its owners and their boss could profit — at the expense of patient safety. The doctors allege in similar law- suits that the frequent patient transfers among the three St. Rose hospital campuses — Rose de Lima and Siena in Henderson and San Martin in the southwest valley — put profit ahead of patient care. When they resisted, they say they were retaliated against and eventually fired. The 3-year-old ambulance company that was used to shuttle patients was partly owned by both the hospital company and the director of the emergency department at the Siena campus at the time, Dr. Richard Henderson. According to their lawsuits, Henderson pushed hard in emails to ER doctors to promote patient shuttling and authorized bonus- Our business is the key ingredient to your business success. Whether you re in the hot dog business or any other business, Cox Business InternetSM and Cox Business VoiceManagerSM can help your business thrive the way you imagined on the day you opened. Not only is Cox Business Internet Professional 10x faster than basic DSL, but we also include Security Suite and online backup at no additional charge and our phone service comes with up to 20 of the professional features you need most, like Call Forwarding, so you never miss an important call. Plus, our award-winning local support is available 24/7. Call today and see how your business is our business. 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Speed comparison based on maximum download speed of Cox Business Internet Professional service 15 Mbps v. basic DSL 1.5 Mbps service. Services not available in all areas. Other restrictions may apply. Telephone services are provided by Cox Nevada Telcom, LLC. ©2013 CoxCom, LLC, d/b/a Cox Communications Las Vegas, Inc. All rights reserved. * 8 20130422_VI08_F.indd 8 es to doctors who transferred the most patients to other St. Rose facilities. Henderson stopped working at St. Rose last July, the hospital said. Since then, the pressure to transfer patients via Community Ambulance has dramatically diminished, said a hospital source with knowledge of the situation. Among the defendants named in the lawsuits, filed last year in District Court by Dr. David Watson and Dr. M. Mark Ferdowsian, are St. Rose's parent company Dignity Health; the company contracted to provide ER services, Emergency Medicine Physicians, and its former medical director, Henderson. According to the lawsuits and interviews with Watson and Ferdowsian, Henderson and the hospital company frequently requested patient transports by Community Ambulance not out of medical necessity but as a business strategy — detailed in various staff emails from Henderson — from which they would profit. Kate Grey, a spokeswoman for St. Rose, said she could not comment on the ongoing litigation, but said the Siena campus, located at the busy intersection of Eastern Avenue and St. Rose Parkway, was consistently on "code purple," meaning it had an overloaded emergency department. The hospital is expanding to meet the demand with a new tower and has also instituted a sophisticated, computerized patient management system to deal with the overcrowding. These steps offer evidence, Grey said, of Siena's crowded conditions, which necessitate the high volume of patient transfers. She said patients are explained the benefits of transferring and given the option of doing so. She also said that patients are only billed if the transfer is due to medical reasons; patients are not billed if they are transferred purely to relieve overcrowding. The doctors' former employer, Emergency Medicine Physicians, argue in court documents that Ferdowsian's and Watson's employment contracts require them to enter arbitration to settle disputes. District Court Judge Doug Smith agreed in the case of Ferdowsian, whose case was dismissed and will now be decided by an arbitrator. According to his attorney, arbitration is expected to cost Ferdowsian $50,000. A judge has yet to rule on the Watson case. Sun researcher Rebecca Clifford-Cruz contributed to this report. | 22 APRIL 2013 | 4/18/13 2:14:28 PM