After Key Resignation, Peltason Orders Study of UCI Medical School

UC Irvine Chancellor Jack W. Peltason said Thursday that he will assemble a panel of expert consultants to examine problems in UCI’s troubled medical school after the resignation of Dr. Edward J. Quilligan as vice chancellor of health sciences.

Quilligan’s resignation earlier this week as vice chancellor and dean of the College of Medicine will become effective no later than March 15, upon selection of an interim dean, Peltason said in a statement issued from San Francisco, where he was attending a UC Board of Regents meeting. The acting dean is expected to be chosen from among UCI’s medical faculty.

“In view of the rapidly changing nature of demands on and needs of the medical school, I am bringing in some expert faculty and administration from other institutions to serve as professional consultants to me and to the faculty,” Peltason said in a letter to the medical school faculty.

Consultants From UC System

The consultants, to be assembled next week, will be selected from within the UC system, UCI spokeswoman Linda Granell said.

The advisory panel will also consult with UCI’s Academic Senate, the faculty body that sets curriculum. The same search committee that brought Quilligan to UCI from Davis in October, 1986, will be reactivated to find a successor.

Quilligan, an internationally recognized authority on Cesarian sections and fetal monitoring who has been president of the American Obstetrics and Gynecology Society, will return to teaching and a clinical practice in affiliation with the university.

Despite a tumultuous tenure, Quilligan’s resignation took most faculty members by surprise.

Rumors swirled on campus and at UCI Medical Center in Orange on Thursday. Well-connected faculty members and administrators advanced opinions that seemed to depend as much on their alliances as their vantage points--that Quilligan was fired by Peltason, or that he quit because he could not unify the faculty and wanted to make way for someone who could.

Quilligan and Peltason, the only ones who really knew, were not talking Thursday.

Lost an Astute Mediator

Dr. Cyril Barton, associate professor and kidney specialist who is among faculty physicians opposing Quilligan’s plan to require doctors to pay up to 60% of their outside earnings to the medical school, said Quilligan lost a politically astute mediator when his No. 2 man, Dr. Philip DiSaia, resigned as associate vice chancellor because of a heart condition in January.

Quilligan then was on his own to answer for personnel problems and a Medical Center deficit that leaped from $1 million in 1986 to a projected $12 million this year, Barton said.

“Quilligan had this problem of a huge medical center deficit, and he lost the confidence and respect of the rank-and-file faculty,” Barton said. “When DiSaia became ill, Quilligan came under fire from above.”

A high-ranking administrator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described Quilligan’s problems as “cumulative.” The administrator said Quilligan stepped aside despite Peltason’s urgings that he stay on.

“I think the chancellor and Prof. Quilligan saw eye to eye on long-range goals,” the administrator said. “The fact that there was disruption over the compensation plan was not the reason--anytime you deal with the salaries of physicians, there are going to be complainers. And there was a deficit at the hospital, but there is always going to be a deficit.

“The basic problem was that Prof. Quilligan was unable to get past those issues and unite the faculty and move forward.

“It’s a tough, demanding job, and sometimes someone comes to the conclusion that ‘this is more than I can handle,’ ” the administrator said.

But a prominent faculty physician who spoke highly of Quilligan called the resignation “a firing--it was a power play.”

The physician, who also asked not to be named, said the lack of unified faculty support for Quilligan created a condition in which he could be fired without substantial backlash.

“Quilligan got himself into difficulties, with the faculty of the medical school over the pay plan issue, and the administration with the hospital deficit,” the doctor said. “He didn’t have the full support of the faculty, and that provided the means for the chancellor and his other administrators to move in for the kill.”

Half a dozen past and present medical school and medical center administrators were included in speculation about who might be named acting dean. Dr. Stanley van den Noort, who was dean for 12 years, said he is “absolutely not” a candidate.

“In the short term, Dr. Quilligan’s departure slows recruiting and other important activities,” van den Noort said. “It would be better if (the resignation) didn’t happen. It will require an acting dean while a search goes on--maybe a year or two or three.

“We’re looking ahead to somewhat unstable times for the College of Medicine and the Medical Center.”