A former president of Santa Ana-based hospital operator Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc. has beaten back an attempt to oust him from his current job.
Larry Anderson, who cofounded Integrated with Bruce Mogel in 2003, still can call himself chief executive of Oceanside’s Tri-City Medical Center, for now.
Late last month, Tri-City’s board voted 4-3 to terminate Anderson’s contract, according to the North County Times newspaper.
Then, 48 hours later, the board changed its mind and voted 5-0 to keep him, at least until an August evaluation meeting, the paper said.
All the while, drama swirled at the hospital, with one board member being charged with mishandling painkillers while employed as a nurse at Scripps Memorial Encinitas Hospital, two board members refusing to vote, and one of those members quitting after the 5-0 outcome, according to the Times.
Some of the controversy surrounding Anderson seems to relate to his management style, which some board members claim is too “blunt” and more suited for a private, for-profit company, the Times said.
Some board members also are concerned with his attempts to get hospital contracts in order to attract orthopedic and neurologic surgery patients, Anderson told the Times late last month.
Tri-City board member Ron Mitchell, who originally voted to fire Anderson, later changed his mind but declined to tell the Times why.
In an earlier interview, Mitchell told the newspaper that he was concerned that Tri-City had entered into a number of lawsuits under Anderson’s leadership, including ones with rivals San Diego-based Scripps Health and Palomar Pomerado Health, which has facilities in Escondido and Poway.
“Rather than picking up the phone and talking to somebody, we call our attorneys and that’s not a style of business I’m used to,” Mitchell told the newspaper.
Anderson left Santa Ana’s Integrated in 2008.
Integrated owns Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, Western Medical Center-Anaheim, Coastal Communities Hospital in Santa Ana and Orange’s Chapman Medical Center. It bought the hospitals for $70 million from Dallas’ Tenet Healthcare Corp. in 2005.
In Integrated’s short history, it has battled shareholders and doctors as it has worked to turn around its hospitals.
About a month ago, Riverside doctor and medical entrepreneur Kali P. Chaudhuri spent $70 million for loans backed by Integrated’s hospitals.
The loans were sold by a court-appointed receiver for Integrated’s defunct lender, Medical Capital Holdings Inc. of Tustin.
Chaudhuri owns about half of Integrated.
Spine Center Opens
The Southern California Center for Neuroscience and Spine recently opened at Chapman Medical Center in Orange.
The center is dedicated to diagnosing and treating patients who have neck and spine disorders, brain tumors, movement disorders and epilepsy.
Center doctors also plan to take part in clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of new treatments for neurological disorders.
Doctors Devin Binder, Gowriharan Thaiyananthan and Ali Mesiwala are the center’s co-directors. Binder and Thaiyananthan previously were at UCI Medical Center, while Mesiwala previously was with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Healthcare Talk
The University of California, Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business’ Center for Health Care Management and Policy is presenting “The Impact of Healthcare Reform on Physicians, Hospitals, Insurance and Publicly Funded Programs” May 27.
The presentation will be at the University Club on UC Irvine’s campus.
Speakers are set to include Richard Afable, chief executive of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach; Richard Chambers, chief executive of CalOptima Inc., a county agency in Orange that coordinates MediCal healthcare; Jay Cohen, president and chairman of Monarch HealthCare, an Irvine-based medical group; and Tammy Tucker, a vice president for Anthem Blue Cross of California. Chris De Rosa, president of Cigna Healthcare of California, is the moderator.
For more information call (949) 824-8474.
Bits and Pieces:
Ralph Whitworth, a former chairman and director of Lake Forest-based home healthcare provider Apria Healthcare Group Inc., was elected to the board of Genzyme Corp., a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotechnology company. Whitworth, principal and cofounder of San Diego’s Relational Investors LLC, was on Apria’s board from 1998 to 2005, when he stepped down … CardioPolymers, a Laguna Hills company that’s developing an implantable device to treat heart failure, said it added $1.35 million to its venture funding, according to figures from the PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association quarterly venture capital report. CardioPolymers, whose investors include Laguna Hills-based Fjord Ventures LLC and Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., a unit of Johnson & Johnson, hasn’t released details on its funding … The Institute for Healthcare Advancement, a La Habra-based nonprofit, is holding a health literacy conference later this week in Irvine.
