UCI, heal thyself
UC IRVINE SHOULD BE commended for moving quickly to investigate the many patient-care problems at its scandal-plagued medical center -- and for getting rid of one of those responsible, Dr. Ralph Cygan, the former chief executive. But now the university must follow up with stronger measures to assure patients and taxpayers that this wayward hospital can still be saved. And the first essential step on the road to recovery is firing the medical school dean, Dr. Thomas C. Cesario.
Cesario has been in charge of the medical school during more than a decade of scandals at UCI Medical Center: the theft of patients’ eggs and embryos, the illegal billing of patients for experimental drugs, the improper sale of cadavers, the liver transplant program that recruited new patients while turning down livers because it didn’t have a doctor to transplant them. Need we go on?
The first few embarrassments might have been blamed on some rogue doctors, but when there is trouble in department after department, year after year, there’s a systemic problem. Regardless of whether Cesario helped create this atmosphere or simply was too inept a manager to recognize and change it, he should no longer be in charge.
The most recent report on the hospital, released last month by a panel of five experts appointed by the UCI chancellor, makes that clear. UCI Medical Center’s managers were so busy thinking about how to make their teaching hospital the next UCLA or Stanford, they overlooked basic patient care. They were so intent on keeping up a good reputation, they ignored or punished whistle-blowers. And the report pinpointed Cesario’s leadership as one of the key problems.
In accepting the report, Chancellor Michael V. Drake said all the right things. UCI “must be true to our values,” he said, and its initial response to the study would be “only our first steps.”
Getting rid of Cesario won’t end the hospital’s woes. Chances are the medical center will have to settle for a more modest identity for itself, picking and choosing its areas of specialization. (Orange County might never have needed its own liver transplant center in the first place, with two major programs within an hour’s drive.) And the hospital will require continual outside oversight. But the healing cannot begin in earnest until Cesario is no longer there.
