Apria’s Vice Chairman Resigns After Less Than 5 Months : Management: Timothy M. Aitken, former CEO of Abbey Healthcare, terms it a cost-cutting measure.

Apria Healthcare Group announced Tuesday that its No. 2 executive, Timothy M. Aitken, is resigning after less than five months on the job.

Aitken, 51, the former chairman of Abbey Healthcare Group, became Apria’s vice chairman and president in June after Abbey merged with its Orange County rival, Homedco Group, forming Apria. Jeremy M. Jones, 54, former Homedco chairman, became chairman and chief executive of Apria, which provides home-care services.

Apria officials would not disclose the financial terms of Aitken’s departure. Last summer, as part of the merger, he pocketed $2.5 million from a buyout of his Abbey contract and got a three-year pact, with a $370,000 salary plus bonuses, to stay on with Apria.

In an Apria press release Tuesday, Aitken said he was eliminating his own position as a cost-cutting measure for the company. He plans to leave sometime this month.

Analysts expressed little surprise at the announcement, noting that Apria does not need two top executives.

“This is Jerry Jones’ show. He’s done a good job, and you can’t have two heads of a corporation without risking the viability of the entire entity,” said John Hindelong, an analyst at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in New York.

What’s more, Abbey suffered through a period of executive turnover during Aitken’s four-year tenure there, while Jones’ team at Homedco experienced little change, noted Thomas Snow, an analyst with New York-based Buckingham Research Group.

Still, analysts credited Aitken, a British investment banker, with engineering Abbey’s financial turnaround. Helen O’Donnell, an analyst at PaineWebber, noted that after he joined Abbey as its chief executive and chairman in 1991, he reorganized the company by cutting costs and excess staff. In the four-year period through Dec. 31, Abbey’s operating profit more than quadrupled to $43.6 million as revenue more than doubled to $439.2 million.

O’Donnell said that Abbey’s stock price also shot up during Aitken’s tenure. The stock was trading in the range of $36 a share before the merger--nearly triple its initial offering price of $12.50 in 1992.

She said she expects that Aitken will wind up running another company that’s ripe for a turnaround.