Administrator of Edgemoor Transferred

San Diego County health officials have removed the administrator of the beleaguered Edgemoor Geriatric Hospital in Santee, which has been fined $35,000 during the past year for state health law violations.

Francoise Euliss will be transferred to a yet-to-be-determined county post--possibly one concerned with issues of long-term health care--with no change in pay, Paul Simms, deputy director of health services, said Saturday. Simms will serve as the acting administrator of the 323-bed hospital until a replacement for Euliss can be found.

On Friday, inspectors from the state Department of Health Services fined the county-run hospital $5,000 for injecting penicillin into a patient whose charts indicated she was allergic to the drug.

The woman didn’t display an allergic reaction, but she was taken to Grossmont Hospital for observation following Tuesday’s injection. She has since been returned to Edgemoor.

In the past year, the inspectors have also fined the hospital a total of $30,000 for violations that included placing unwarranted restraints on a patient, leaving an invalid unattended in a bath where she drowned, failing to properly monitor a double-amputee who fell from his bed and later died of heart problems and accidentally breaking a patient’s arm.

Edgemoor is under investigation by the county grand jury and the state auditor-general at the request of Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego).

Simms declined to specify the reasons for Euliss’ removal, stating only that “the department felt the need for a new and different perspective in the management and direction of day-to-day operations” at Edgemoor. Euliss was informed of the removal Friday and it took effect at 5 p.m. that day.

The removal was “not directly” related to the penicillin injection incident, Simms said,but when asked if it was indirectly related, he replied, “You could say so.”

He declined to discuss the Euliss’ removal further, explaining that details “of personnel management are those that we tend to not air publicly.”

Simms said county officials have not selected Euliss’ new job yet. “We are developing some specific administrative tasks (for her) that we have not been able to implement due to the work load that we’ve all been under.” He said those jobs might involve work on issues of long-term care--that is, convalescent and nursing homes.

Attempts to reach Euliss on Saturday for comment were unsuccessful.