Tenet Confidentiality Directive on Employees Discussing the Events

The Tenet Confidentiality Directive on Employees Discussing the Events was a post-Katrina instruction that shaped how Memorial Medical Center employees were advised to respond to government and media inquiries. It offered access to hospital counsel and the option of having a representative present, but also asked employees not to discuss the events with colleagues or people outside the hospital. In the investigation that followed, the directive sat at the boundary between protecting employees in interviews and restricting the flow of information investigators needed to reconstruct the crisis.

The Hospital Memo

On the third day of intense media coverage, a memo went by email to all Memorial Medical Center personnel, marked “Attorney-Client Privileged and Confidential.” It told employees contacted by government or media representatives that they could speak with the hospital’s lawyer. If they chose to be interviewed, they could request that a hospital representative appear with them; the memo described a third party’s presence as prudent protection against words being misconstrued or taken out of context.

The instruction went further than offering legal support. It said that “it is not appropriate to discuss publicly these matters” and asked staff to refrain from talking about them with other employees or people outside the hospital. Employees with questions, or who were contacted by the government or media, were directed to call Audrey Andrews and could call collect. The memo therefore combined access to counsel and a warning about the risks of interviews with an explicit request for silence beyond those interviews.

Tenet Counsel and the Investigation

The hospital memo was followed by a distinct intervention from Tenet Healthcare. On the same day, Tenet attorney Harry Rosenberg faxed a request to the chief prosecutor of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit: before questioning Tenet employees, officials should tell them they could confer with Rosenberg or another Tenet attorney and have an attorney or hospital representative present. Virginia Rider and Butch Schafer complied, both because they considered it an ethical obligation and because they wanted information gathered in interviews to remain admissible in court.

Schafer also recognized the company’s institutional interest in the arrangement. Tenet’s offer to represent employees could help the company learn what its workers might say about it while facing possible lawsuits. The book presents that strategic dimension as Schafer’s assessment, not as proof that the representation itself invalidated interviews or that employees were ordered to give false accounts.

Effects on Employee Interviews

As the investigation proceeded, the employees Rider and Schafer most wanted to question became represented by lawyers and reluctant to speak. Even employees who agreed to interviews gave guarded answers. Drawing on decades of legal practice, Schafer sensed that attorneys had prepared interviewees on what they could and could not say; investigators had little recourse when a witness answered that they could not recall an event that seemed unforgettable.

The book contrasts this pattern with the approach taken by LifeCare’s attorneys, who eventually advised their clients to be open in interviews and volunteer facts investigators might not know to ask about. The contrast underscores that the directive did not operate in a single, uniform legal environment: advice to seek representation could coexist with different counsel’s advice about how forthcoming a witness should be.

The Wider Culture of Silence

The directive became part of a broader post-evacuation reluctance to discuss what had happened, but the narrative does not identify the memo as the sole cause of that silence. Memorial employees described an immediate “Code of Silence”: they would not talk about the events, and, as one nurse characterized the stance, “nothing happened.” Some people at the hospital seemed to be protecting themselves. Memorial CFO Curtis Dosch later said that he had not understood how large the matter might become until CNN employees appeared at his home; he also wondered whether patients might have survived if they had been evacuated and whether anyone else had the right to decide they would not.

Investigators’ concerns extended beyond interview reticence. Tenet attorneys said that copies of the medical records in the company’s possession had been provided, while Rider and Schafer believed some records were still missing. Tenet had also prevented LifeCare representatives from entering the hospital during the first weeks after the storm; meanwhile, patient records, computer servers, and tapes went missing, and LifeCare nurses’ lockers were cut open and their property removed. LifeCare sought an injunction for the return of materials. These circumstances intensified Schafer’s suspicions, but his further questions about whether corporate officials had known of or ordered the injections remained suspicions, not established findings. The directive’s significance lies in this unresolved tension: a formal appeal to legal protection and controlled communication arose amid a larger struggle over what employees could say, what evidence could be recovered, and who would answer for the hospital’s decisions.