Team Health subpoenaed over services at HMA facilities

Team Health, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based physician staffing company, said it received a subpoena Tuesday related to its services at hospitals owned by Health Management Associates.

In a brief filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Team Health said it intends to cooperate with the investigation and is responding to the request from HHS' inspector general's office.

Team Health's physicians include emergency medicine doctors, hospitalists, anesthesiologists and other hospital-based specialists.

Health Management Associates of Naples, Fla., has been under investigation for its short-stay admissions practices since 2011. The company disclosed in July that it had received additional subpoenas that “supplement” the original requests for information into its emergency department operations.

The fallout from the investigation—including decreased admissions in favor of observation stays and mounting legal expenses—has been one of the factors bolstering activist investor Glenview Capital Management's campaign to replace HMA's board.

The chain, now under a new board of directors as a result, has a yet-to-be-approved $3.9 billion bid on the table from Community Health Systems, Franklin, Tenn. Community is also under a similar investigation into its own emergency room admissions practices.

Follow Beth Kutscher on Twitter: @MHbkutscher