Welcome to UCI. New Chancellor Michael Drake says placing UCI Medical Center chief Ralph Cygan on paid leave is “the most difficult decision I’ve ever made.” Drake described Cygan as a respected colleague and probably his “best friend” at UCI. But “everyone from the CEO down” has to take responsibility for the collapse of the hospital’s liver program, at least until a blue-ribbon panel determines what went wrong. Drake says his medical background (professor of ophthalmology, UC health administrator) and newcomer status will help him to act decisively once the committee makes its report in late January or early February: “I have no interest in anything but getting it right going forward.” Drake so far has adopted a higher profile than Laurel Wilkening, the relatively new UCI chancellor whose reticence during the fertility clinic scandal in 1995 was widely criticized. But lawsuits lie ahead, and since Drake made the above public remarks, federal and state investigators have begun their own probes of hospital operations. Drake acknowledges the liver program “was on the wrong side of the line” in meeting standards. But he asserts that of 32 patient deaths cited by the Los Angeles Times, “fewer than a handful” of cases will prove to be “controversial,” though “even one is too many.” On another subject, Drake says the university may decide in as soon as a year what to do with its land by Campus Drive along the red-hot Jamboree Road corridor. And the Bay area transplant says OC reminds him of HBO’s “Deadwood”,still something of a frontier town …
Lawyer Todd Theodora (Stephan, Oringher, Richman & Theodora in Costa Mesa) represents Henry Samueli on Arrowhead Pond and Mighty Ducks matters, and he’s defending Arte Moreno in the Angels-name lawsuit,which means that Theodora represents the guy who likes having Anaheim in his team name and the guy who hates it …
Deja vu: The invitation to his Thursday fund-raiser for state controller touts state Sen. Joe Dunn as “The Man Who Cracked Enron.” It echoes “The Man the Oil Companies Fear Most” slogan that catapulted another OC Democrat, Assemblyman Ken Cory, into the controller’s office in 1974 …
Bankers: Tom Rogers, who runs City National Bank’s commercial and private banking operations in OC, has added San Diego County to his bailiwick. OC President Todd Hollander has left US Bank to become president of community banking for Cal National Bank; he’ll have offices in OC and L.A. …
Holiday wrap: There’s no other holiday party like the Makarechians’ bash at the St. Regis Monarch Beach. Father RR in Chicago muses on receiving two of his favorite holiday catalogs,wines, fine chocolates and brie from OCer Reva Colover’s Van’s Gifts; smoked hams, ribs, sausages and cheese logs from Nueske’s in Wisconsin. Publicist Christine Byrd notes that UCI has experts on many aspects of the holiday season,from marketing to psychological depression.
