As UCI Medical Center gets ready to open its $555 million New University Hospital, it will be faced with a familiar challenge,finding a permanent chief executive to help run it.
The Orange teaching hospital is going to work on finding a successor for Maureen Zehntner, who is retiring March 6.
Zehntner said in November that she was leaving the hospital’s top spot in order to spend more time with her husband and family.
“There will ultimately be a national search, because I’m leaving in a few weeks,33 days,but who’s counting?” Zehntner said.
In the meantime, she said the hospital has been looking at potential internal and external candidates for an interim chief executive, but hasn’t made a decision yet.
Zehntner did share some ideas about what she’d like to see in a successor.
“I think it’s real critical that the person have a track record of being a well-seasoned CEO, somebody who really understands the day-to-day issues of operating hospitals,” she said.
An academic medical center background isn’t necessary, Zehntner said, noting that she didn’t come out of a university hospital background when former hospital boss Mark Laret brought her to UCI Medical Center in 1996.
Her pre-UCI career includes 16 years with defunct Martin Luther Hospital in Anaheim and nearly four years with St. Joseph Hospital-Orange. She also served as an operating consultant for Children’s Hospital of Orange County.
“I didn’t come with any preconceived notions about how things needed to be,” Zehntner said.
But Zehntner said she believes her successor “should have some familiarity” with hospitals that are either owned by a university or have a strong affiliation with an educational institution.
She also pointed out that the main focus for any hospital chief executive is the quality of patient care that his or her hospital delivers.
Other important chief executive skills include communication and consensus-building, particularly in an academic medical center where missions such as teaching, research and patient care compete, Zehntner said. She said the candidate should be “somebody who’s skilled at getting people brought into the same vision.”
A Lot to Deal With
Whoever takes over the job will have a lot to deal with: UCI, which is generally among OC’s largest hospitals by revenue, beds and patients, is getting ready to open the New University Hospital, which was built partly to address California’s hospital seismic safety law.
New University Hospital’s first phase includes 482,428 square feet of space, 236 beds and 15 operating rooms. It is one of a wave of OC hospital expansions and is set to replace UCI’s current tower, which dates back to the 1960s and doesn’t meet California’s hospital earthquake safety standards.
UCI is going to start moving services to New University Hospital in mid-February and expects to take its first patients in the New University Hospital around March 1, Zehntner said, mentioning that work on a second phase that will include a new medical imaging center, four more operating rooms and 30 medical-surgical beds has already started.
“We’ve been doing mock moves” into the building, Zehntner said, adding that she’s been serving as a model for the practice runs, playing a patient who needs to be moved.
“That’s what’s cool about the new building,it’s a much better environment to do the work (that doctors and staff) have been doing,” Zehntner said.
As for Zehntner’s retirement, family considerations were at work, she said. She turns 61 in June; her mother and father died within a short time of each other last year, her nephew had a health scare and she noted that her husband, who is 11 years older, has already been retired for eight years.
Zehntner has plans for her post-retirement life, including a possible teaching post at UCI’s nursing school, and she’s looking at doing a research project with faculty members.
Former Scandals
Zehntner took over the top spot at UCI during trying times.
Three years ago, former hospital boss Ralph Cygan, who now teaches at UCI, was put on leave and resigned after nearly six years on the job.
Cygan’s resignation was prompted by allegations of mismanagement at the teaching hospital’s liver transplant program.
Besides the liver transplant program, other scandals at the hospital included a problem with its willed body program involving the sale of cadavers and the discovery that a professor misspent money on software rather than cancer research.
At the time of those scandals, recruiters believed that the incoming chief executive would have to have a mastery of crisis management.
“The integrity of the institution (was) shaken in the public’s eye. The new chief executive (had) a big job re-establishing credibility with the internal constituency as well as the community,” said Carole Campbell, a healthcare recruiter and director with Stanton Chase International, a Dallas-based executive search firm, at the time.
That search ultimately ended in early 2008, when Zehntner was elevated to the permanent position.
UCI took some flack about her promotion from chief operating officer to chief executive since some argued she was too close to the scandals.
Zehntner’s direct boss, David Bailey, UCI’s vice chancellor for health affairs, dismissed those concerns, saying that there were “hundreds, probably thousands of people here during that time who had nothing to do with this. What am I going to do,fire everybody? That’s silly.”
It took UCI more than two years to settle on hiring Zehntner,who was serving as the interim CEO during that time,and the hospital is anticipating another grueling, national search to find her replacement. It will likely have an interim chief executive in place by
the time Zehntner leaves and insiders say that person could be named as early as this week.
