Tenet Healthcare Corp., one of the nation's largest operators of hospitals and outpatient facilities, has signed a sweeping, 10-year IT services deal with Perot Systems, Tenet disclosed Friday.

Under the contract, Perot will manage information systems at all of Tenet's 66 hospitals throughout the country. Perot already manages IT systems at 25 Tenet hospitals under an existing contract that is extended and broadened under the new deal. About 400 Tenet IT staffers will transfer to Perot with comparable benefits and salaries, Tenet said in a statement. A company spokesperson declined to provide the deal's value.

Among other things, Perot will help Tenet implement and maintain a system-wide IT backbone that will tie together all of the Tenet's computing resources and healthcare applications.

"End-to-end management of our IT resources by Perot Systems will enable us to support and maintain the advanced clinical information technology of the future more efficiently and more effectively at our facilities than is possible with individually managed departments at our hospitals," said Stephen Brown, executive VP and CIO for Tenet, in a statement.

Brown also said Perot will help Tenet rationalize its application portfolio. "We are building a foundation that allows us to have single-vendor suites of products at all of our hospitals. To accomplish this, we're going to need a high level of coordination and technical skills in all of our hospital IS departments," Brown said.

On Thursday, Perot announced the opening of a new data center in Florence, Ky. The center will in part be used to support another Perot healthcare customer -- Cincinatti-based Catholic Healthcare Partners. Perot received approval for up to $500,000 in tax incentives under the Kentucky Jobs Development Act to open the center.