Abbey Healthcare Stock Falls 7.4% Amid Jitters : Management: Second reshuffling of executives in a year is believed to have affected price of shares.

Abbey Healthcare Group Inc.’s stock fell 7.4% Friday as investors grew nervous over the second management crisis in a year at one of the nation’s leading home health-care providers.

Abbey said that its president, Jerilyn P. Asher, has disagreed with the direction being set for the Costa Mesa company.

She met Friday with Abbey Chairman Timothy M. Aitken in Denver, where he is vacationing, to discuss their differences.

The situation should be resolved over the weekend, according to executives.

In Friday’s Nasdaq trading, Abbey’s stock fell $1.69 a share to close at $21.06.

One report Friday alleged that Asher had uncovered “accounting irregularities” at the company, but executives vehemently denied that.

An aide to Asher, who works out of the company’s Boston office, said she knew nothing about such problems.

The aide did acknowledge that Asher and Aitken differed over what course Abbey should take to expand and add more business to its home services and infusion therapy.

Asher was the founder of Protocare Inc. in Waltham, Mass.

After engineering its sale to Abbey in March, she became president of Abbey and has worked since on developing new business.

Abbey said Wednesday that it had asked Asher to step down and “take a leave of absence,” partly because of her daughter’s and her mother’s illnesses.

Asher, however, never asked to be relieved, and the company withdrew its request Thursday.

In February, the company ousted 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.