Tenet Shareholder Committee Calls for Ouster of Executive Management Team

MIAMI, Jun 23, 2003 (BUSINESS WIRE) --

M. Lee Pearce, M.D., chairman of the Tenet Shareholder Committee, today called on the Board of Directors of the Tenet Healthcare Corporation to oust the company's entrenched executive management team headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, to replace this failed management with a new and highly qualified team, and to move the Company to its operational headquarters in Dallas, Texas.

"We are appalled, but not at all surprised by Tenet's latest revelations," said Pearce. "The guidance provided by the company at the Merrill Lynch Healthcare Conference in December 2002 contained what we believed to be highly unrealistic expectations. It is time for the Board of Tenet to understand that it must stop relying on information coming from its entrenched management team, now led by former Tenet CFO Trevor Fetter. It is apparent that the primary objective of top management is to ensure its own survival. It is time for Mr. Barbakow's protege to go, along with Michael Focht and Christi Sulzbach. This remaining triumvirate helped cause the problem and can never be part of the solution.

"Given the serial nature of the continuing financial, legal and regulatory revelations, this management team has demonstrated that it is incapable of providing reliable guidance to the Board. Since this crisis commenced over eight months ago, it appears that Tenet's Board and its stockholders have been fed misinformation regarding the company's financial condition, its financial prospects, and legal problems. How long will the Board support this failed management team?" On May 19, 2003, The Tenet Shareholder Committee called on the Board to implement the following initiatives, and its failure to fully implement these reforms has once again cost shareholders. -- The company must make a commitment to provide quality and safe healthcare;

-- Current senior management is contaminated by its past actions
and must go;

-- Appoint a new, highly qualified CEO from outside the company;

-- Adopt tougher standards for director independence;

-- Expand the Board of Directors with a majority of the Board
composed of new, independent directors able to adequately
staff all Board committees;