Action to Oust Abbey Exec Is Rescinded

A day after asking its president to step down, Abbey Healthcare Group Inc. said Thursday that it has withdrawn its request “pending further immediate discussions” between the home health care provider and its second-in-command, Jerilyn P. Asher.

Timothy M. Aitken, Abbey’s chairman and chief executive, said in a prepared statement that he is “hopeful that there will be an appropriate outcome to these discussions.”

He said that Asher has not been dismissed as the Costa Mesa company’s president, even though a press release and comments from corporate executives Wednesday suggested that she had been.

Neither corporate executives nor Asher, who heads Abbey’s Protocare Inc. subsidiary in Waltham, Mass., could be reached for comment Thursday.

Had Asher been forced out, it would mark the second time this year that Abbey had ousted a president.

In February, the company pushed out Victor M.G. Chaltiel as president and chief executive. Chaltiel, who had come from a company acquired by Abbey only months earlier, has filed a wrongful-termination suit against Abbey.

On Wednesday, Abbey issued a statement saying it had asked Asher to step down and “take a leave of absence.” Abbey said it was removing Asher at least partly because of “personal pressures and the prolonged illnesses” in her family.

Asher has a daughter who was hospitalized recently with complications of spina bifida, an inoperable congenital spinal condition. In addition, Asher’s mother is seriously ill in a Florida nursing home.

The company acknowledged, however, that Asher never asked for a leave of absence.

“It reached a point where the board feels a leave of absence is best for all considered,” Richard J. Rapp, Abbey’s chief financial officer, said Wednesday. “She may not have realized that this was an option.”