Regents Confirm UCI Medical Center Executive Director : Staffing: Mark Laret, an administrator from UCLA who specializes in managed care, will start at the Irvine facility Aug. 28.
Mark R. Laret says he has no illusions: He’s going in with his eyes wide open.
UCI Medical Center has been bludgeoned by a scandal at its once prestigious fertility clinic. It faces financial uncertainty as Medi-Cal and Medicare funding are in danger of being slashed. And it must shoulder a hefty burden as an institution serving a large number of poor people in a county with no public hospital.
But Laret, 41, who was confirmed by UC Regents on Friday as UCI Medical Center’s executive director, appears genuinely excited about the job. Though he says he has no interest in pushing aside UC Irvine’s real problems, the point he likes to stress is this: UCI Medical Center has enormous potential.
Is he an optimist? “Gotta be,” he says with a half-smile. But most of all, Laret says he likes putting his skills to the test.
The relatively young deputy director of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and chief executive officer of UCLA Medical Group might easily have stayed put. In fact, many of his UCLA colleagues would have preferred that.
By all accounts, Laret’s career has soared at UCLA, where he started 15 years ago as a communications director. He oversaw the business and administrative affairs of a 900-employee medical group and was the highest ranking non-physician at one of the state’s premier medical institutions. Just this week his dogged efforts to help UCLA acquire Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center ended in success, boosting UCLA’s primary care base.
But when Laret’s longtime friend and former UCLA colleague, UC Irvine Executive Vice Chancellor Sidney H. Golub, called to discuss UCI’s predicament, Laret’s interest was piqued.
“Not that there isn’t plenty yet to do at UCLA,” Laret said, “but UCI represented an opportunity as much as it did a challenge.”
UC Irvine, he said, holds tremendous promise in Orange County’s health-care market. It already has been named a national cancer center by federal health officials, and it is poised to benefit from its proximity to biotechnology firms. It also is about to join a countywide experiment in managed care, the Cal-OPTIMA program, in which about 300,000 Medi-Cal recipients will join HMO-like networks beginning in October.
Managed care happens to be Laret’s specialty. While at UCLA, he organized a massive managed care operation, integrating medical group and hospital functions.
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Besides implementation of Cal-OPTIMA, Laret faces other pressing issues when he starts work at UC Irvine on Aug. 28. They include how to deal with the fallout from a fertility scandal that has sullied the reputation of the medical center and contributed to sagging staff morale. He is replacing Mary Piccione, who was fired by UC Irvine Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening for poor oversight of the Center for Reproductive Health and managing the medical center “by fear.”
In a nationally publicized scandal, doctors at the fertility center are alleged to have stolen human eggs and are accused of a range of clinical and financial misconduct. They deny all wrongdoing.
Laret said private clinical practices at this and other universities obviously need more oversight.
“Very clearly the rules are tightening up--and appropriately so,” he said.
Laret said he comes with no plans to clean house at the medical center, however. He has characterized himself as an administrator who likes to manage by cooperation. His strength, he said, is in developing strong relationships between administration and clinical staff, and getting both “moving in the same direction.”
Laret will be paid $192,000, which is 13% more than he earned at UCLA.
Wilkening said Friday she was fortunate to be bringing in such an able administrator so quickly. She was so eager to fill the position that she asked regents to waive traditional recruitment procedures that could have delayed his hiring.
“I’m thrilled, I’m really thrilled” to have him, Wilkening said.
