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Tenet Healthcare Corp. agreed to a deal that will hand it control of United Surgical Partners International Inc. as consolidation picks up among hospital companies seeking to adapt to pressure from the new U.S. health-care regime. Tenet said it would create a joint venture with Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe, combining Tenet’s short-stay, or ambulatory, surgery centers and imaging facilities with USPI, which the private-equity firm owns. Tenet will initially own 50.1% of the operation, with the right to buy the rest over five years. (Cimilluca and Weaver, 3/23)

Tenet Healthcare Corp on Monday said it would become the largest U.S. provider of outpatient surgery services through a joint venture with United Surgical Partners International and expects to fully own the company within five years. More medical procedures are being performed on an outpatient basis as technology improves, thus lowering costs by allowing patients to go home sooner. (Kelly and Grover, 3/23)

Several big Dallas-based health care firms announced a blur of partnerships and acquisitions Monday. The tie-ups aren’t final until regulators have had their say. If approved, however, the first deal announced Monday would make Tenet Healthcare Corp. the nation’s largest operator of outpatient surgical centers. (Landers, 3/23)

A laboratory that has collected large sums from Medicare has reached a tentative agreement with the Justice Department to pay nearly $50 million to settle a civil investigation into whether payments it made to doctors amounted to kickbacks, according to people familiar with the matter. The tentative accord involving Health Diagnostic Laboratory Inc. follows a Page One article in The Wall Street Journal in September that detailed the company’s practice of paying doctors to send it patients’ blood for testing. (Carreyrou, 3/23)