August 12, 2003

Conrad Gerber runs Peï

Profile of and interview with 1950's pop singer Patti Page who, at 75, is still performing and is seeing career resurgence; photos (M)

Bruce Weber reviews play Matt & Ben, directed by David Warren and written and performed by Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers; photo (M)

Bush administration officials say they expect to cut Medicare payments to doctors by 4.2 percent next year unless Congress passes legislation to reduce or eliminate cut; say cut is required by existing Medicare law, but many doctors and some members of Congress disagree; Medicare officials say Congress could avert cut as part of legislation to add drug benefits to Medicare; there is no guarantee Congress will finish work on bill before Jan 1, when cut is to take effect; administration officials say cut in Medicare payments to doctors would not harm beneficiaries or hurt their ability to obtain care; doctors say new cut, after 5.4 percent cut last year, would give them fresh incentive to limit number of elderly patients; doctors repeatedly express concern that Medicare payments are not keeping up with their costs (M)

Special Report: Operating Profits, examines charges that Redding Medical Center, small hospital in rural California community, conducted unnecessary heart procedures and operations on hundreds of healthy patients; hospital's owner Tenet Healthcare has agreed to pay $54 million to government to resolve accusations, but without admitting any wrongdoing; Tenet's business model was based on maximizing dollars it could collect from Medicare--template for private insurers as well--and Medicare's complex formulas reward some kinds of health care, like cardiac care, most richly; this may have made hospital less willing to hear concerns about two of its highest-billing doctors, Dr Chae Myun Moon and Dr Fidel Realyvasquez, who headed hospital's heart institute; Tenet's promise to investors of growing profits required steady growth in cardiac care; those working at Redding say hospital would surely have responded to explicit evidence of problems in heart program, like high death rates, but that financial pressures created disincentive to pursue less specific suspicions, such as those voiced by internist who was told by hospital's chief executive to mind his own business; detailed look into some seemingly unnecessary heart surgeries at Redding Medical Center; photos; graph (L)