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Bush to join Tenet board

Florida is the second-largest market for the hospital operator.

DALLAS - Tenet Healthcare Corp. said Thursday that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has been appointed a director by the hospital operator's board.

Bush, the younger brother of President Bush, left office in January after two terms.

Tenet is among the largest hospital operators in the country, and Florida is its second-largest market.

In a statement issued by Tenet, Bush, 54, said he was impressed by the Dallas-based company's commitment to improving patient care.

Board member Bob Kerrey, a former U.S. senator from Nebraska, said the Bush appointment "reflects the real strides the company has made in recent years to build a solid foundation for future growth based on integrity and quality."

Tenet was the subject of several investigations into Medicare overbilling. For many years, a high percentage of its revenue came from exploiting a loophole in Medicare regulations covering high-cost patients.

The company reached a $900-million settlement with the government last year on those charges.

Bush was born in Midland and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. He moved to Florida in 1980 and entered local politics six years later.

Bush is no stranger to boards of directors. Before he was elected governor in 1998 and re-elected four years later, he was a $50,000- a-year director of a Jacksonville company called Ideon Corp. that ran into financial trouble and was sold. He also briefly served on the board of a bank in Miami called the Private Bank that, after Bush had left the board, would be closed by federal regulators. And he was a director of Jacksonville's American Heritage Life Insurance Co., which in 1999 was acquired by Allstate.

Bush will stand for election for a one-year term at Tenet's annual shareholder meeting May 10 in Dallas. The company said it would amend its recently filed proxy statement to add his name to the list of board nominees.

Tenet shares rose 20 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $7.07 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Information from Times files was used in this report.

[Last modified April 12, 2007, 22:52:56]