Robert Sloane, 69;Author, Hospital Administrator

Robert M. Sloane, 69, former administrator of three major Southern California hospitals and a respected textbook author, died Thursday in Arcadia of liver and kidney failure.

Born in Boston and educated at Brown and Columbia universities, Sloane served in the Navy during the Korean War. He worked at Yale New Haven Hospital and Monmouth Medical Center in New Jersey before moving to California in 1969 to become administrator of the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte. From 1980 until 1986, Sloane was president and chief executive officer of Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital, and from 1994 until his retirement in 1998, he headed Anaheim Memorial Hospital.

Throughout his career as an administrator, he taught at several universities, including Caltech, UCLA and USC, where he directed the health services administration department.

Sloane served as chairman of the Hospital Council of Southern California and Volunteer Hospitals of America. With his wife, Beverly LeBov Sloane, he wrote the textbook “An Introduction to Healthcare Delivery Organizations: Function and Management.”