It hasn’t been the smoothest beginning.
Less than six months after taking over as chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, Michael Drake is dealing with a soap opera-size controversy at UCI Medical Center’s troubled liver transplant program.
“It was disappointing, honestly,” said Drake, who replaced Ralph J. Cicerone, the university’s chancellor since 1998.
Drake has had to make room among his top priorities,general campus issues and building a $360 million hospital to replace its existing facility in Orange,to stem damage from the liver program’s problems.
“I would have spent most of this year, according to my plan, focused on general campus issues primarily,” Drake said.
Instead, he plans to spend a lot of time on the medical center.
“I take this very, very seriously,as seriously as I can take anything,” said Drake, who is an ophthalmologist. “We are absolutely determined to learn what happened, why it happened and want to make sure that nothing even remotely similar happens in the future.”
UCI closed its liver transplant program in November after the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pulled the program’s certification in the wake of mismanagement and poor care allegations.
Thirty-two patients died while waiting for transplants during the past two years, and the hospital rejected livers that other transplant programs accepted, according to investigators.
The family of one former patient who died has filed a lawsuit against the hospital, alleging it rejected livers while he was being treated.
Drake put medical center Chief Executive Ralph Cygan, who he counts as one of his closest friends, on temporary administrative leave. Cygan, also a doctor, has been the hospital’s leader since 2000.
“This was serious enough that we had to start at the very top and say, ‘We’re going to hold, essentially, the leader responsible for the organization,'” Drake said. “The ship has one captain.”
Meanwhile, federal investigators are looking into all of UCI’s medical programs. And Drake has appointed his own committee to examine the transplant program and advise university officials on how to improve the medical center.
That group, led by Meredith Khachigian, a former chair of the University of California’s Board of Regents, has met. A report is due around the beginning of February, according to the chancellor.
“We have a tension between wanting to get to the bottom of this as quickly as we can, but also wanting to make sure we do a completely thorough job of that,” Drake said.
The commission also is looking at whether the liver program’s problems are part of a systemwide breakdown.
“There are unique aspects to this issue that are different from the other ones that have been cited, but I want to make doubly sure that any systemic, cultural or any other issues that may be affecting our response to issues like this are addressed,” Drake said.
It isn’t the first time UCI Medical Center has been hit by controversy.
UCI paid millions of dollars to settle a mid-1990s scandal at the Center for Reproductive Health fertility clinic, which was operated by the university. Workers at the clinic took eggs from some women and implanted them in others without getting approval from the donors.
Drake said he turned to his wife for advice after first learning of the problem in the hospital’s liver program. Brenda Drake, a lawyer, is director of the Public Health Trust, an Oakland-based group that manages funds generated by health-related lawsuits.
“She’s always my most strongest supporter and most careful critic,” Drake said. “Her support and advice were to continue our focus on getting to the bottom of this as quickly as we could.”
UC President Robert Dynes and the Board of Regents are concerned about the issue but “very, very supportive,” Drake said.
Drake said he’s talked with Dynes since the first day about the incident, and that he discussed the liver issue with the regents at a meeting that took place a week after it surfaced.
Drake is no stranger to problems at medical centers in the UC system. Before coming to UCI, Drake was a University of California executive whose job included oversight of the system’s hospitals.
“The most recent, most similar issue was the willed body issue at UCLA,” Drake said.
The University of California, Los Angeles, suspended its program of receiving willed cadavers in 2004 in the wake of a criminal investigation into whether workers were making money from selling human remains.
The cadavers were supposed to be used for anatomy classes at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
