Ex-HealthCare President to Get Post With ICN Pharmaceuticals

Ernest Park, who landed on a $1-million cushion when he lost the presidency of HealthCare USA in that company’s merger two weeks ago with Los Angeles-based Maxicare Health Plans Inc., will assume a top post with ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., The Times has learned.

Officials of the Costa Mesa drug maker Wednesday confirmed that Park will be joining the company in early November but declined to say what his job will be. However, an ICN spokesman said, “He’s going to have a big position.”

Park, who served as HealthCare’s president for only five months, had been ICN’s medical director for a time during the mid-1970s, and since 1983 has been a director of SPI Pharmaceuticals Inc., an ICN subsidiary. After a brief stint as a vice president of the Whittaker Corp., Park was president of CIGNA Healthplans of California, a unit of CIGNA Corp., the Philadelphia-based insurance giant.

He joined Orange-based HealthCare in April as president and chief operating officer, replacing William Scott, who had quietly resigned several months earlier.

Despite Park’s short tenure at HealthCare, terms of its merger with Maxicare called for him to receive more than $1 million in bonuses and accelerated stock options.

Although it remained unclear Wednesday how much ICN will be paying Park, one Los Angeles-based analyst noted that considering his proceeds from the HealthCare-Maxicare merger, it is a moot point anyway. “He certainly doesn’t need the money,” quipped Larry Selwitz of Bateman Eichler, Hill Richards Inc.