A cofounder of Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc. has left the Santa Ana-based hospital operator, after four years of battling doctors and shareholders and working to turn around four challenged Orange County hospitals.
Larry Anderson, who cofounded Integrated with Chief Executive Bruce Mogel in 2003, ended his tenure as president “by mutual agreement,” according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Anderson plans to serve as a consultant through June. Mogel’s adding the president’s title and duties.
Anderson is set to get $465,000 in severance and $180,000 under the consulting deal, according to the filing.
In 2005, Integrated paid $70 million to Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. for four hospitals: Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, Western Medical Center-Anaheim, Coastal Communities Hospital in Santa Ana and Orange’s Chapman Medical Center.
As president, Anderson helped beat back efforts by shareholders to remove him and Mogel from Integrated’s top two jobs.
He also worked on Integrated’s October refinancing of its long-term debt with lender Medical Capital Corp. of Anaheim. Integrated had operated under a deal that allowed it time to refinance its debt while Medical Capital didn’t exercise its rights under the deal, including removing Anderson or Mogel.
Integrated also has battled doctors. It traded lawsuits with a company director and its majority shareholder, the Orange County Physicians Investment Network. The network came into Integrated’s picture after it came under fire for its original majority shareholder, Dr. Kali Chaudhuri.
Chaudhuri bought and later closed a chain of OC healthcare clinics earlier this decade, leaving some 300,000 people without healthcare. The clinics, operating under KPC Medical Management Inc., imploded amid management problems and protracted squabbling with health plans over payments.
Public pressure, including hearings from state and local lawmakers, followed. Integrated eventually rescinded its original deal with Chaudhuri, leaving an opening for the Orange County Physicians Investment Network to invest in the company.
“Having done our research, we knew that there would be a chance that (involving Chaudhuri) would be problematic,” Anderson said in a 2006 interview.
Integrated has faced some challenges with the hospitals it acquired. Anderson in 2006 said that when Tenet announced it was selling the facilities, their assets became impaired and it caused what he called a “significant revenue reduction.”
Integrated also has proposed spending $68 million to buy Anaheim Memorial Medical Center.
King Holds Court
Earlier this month, Edwards Lifesciences Corp. sought to put a public face to its business,making heart valves,by inviting Larry King to its campus in Irvine.
Several hundred Edwards workers and others,photographers, a TV crew and other media types,crowded the company’s auditorium in an atmosphere that could have passed for a pep rally.
When Chief Executive Michael Mussallem introduced King, the audience erupted in heavy applause, punctuated with whistling, as the slight, 74-year-old CNN talk show host,dressed in a pair of flared pinstriped pants, along with his trademark glasses,came to the podium.
King, after warming up the audience with a joke, got down to business and talked about his charitable foundation and its goals.
King also toured Edwards’ plant with Gloria Briones, a Monterey Park woman who received an Edwards valve in December, thanks to a partnership between Edwards and King’s Larry King Cardiac Foundation.
“On a very small scale, I started the Larry King Cardiac Foundation. The mission was to help people,” King said. The foundation helps uninsured people with heart diseases get diagnosed and treated.
King established his foundation in 1988, a year after he had quintuple bypass surgery. Edwards, through its own charitable foundation, has contributed some $250,000 to it.
Bits and Pieces:
SenoRx Inc., an Aliso Viejo maker of breast cancer diagnostic and treatment devices, was sued by Hologic Inc., a Massachusetts maker of mammography and other medical equipment. Cytyc Corp., a Hologic unit, is suing SenoRx for alleged patent infringement of devices used to deliver targeted radiation to a tumor and is seeking unspecified damages and an injunction Karon Morell, a former official at Irvine’s IsoTis Orthobiologics Inc., Yorba Linda’s Nobel Biocare USA and Costa Mesa’s Newport Medical Instruments, is the new vice president, regulatory and quality affairs for Artes Medical Inc., a San Diego company that’s developing a lower-face skin filler to compete with Allergan Inc.’s Juv & #233;derm.
