UCI Probing Official’s Spending

UC Irvine officials have imposed strict financial controls within the College of Medicine as they investigate possible misuse by a division director of about $1 million in federal and state funding.

University auditors have been interviewing staff and scouring the finances of the epidemiology division for nearly a year to determine, in part, whether grant money intended for particular research was improperly diverted to fund an unapproved software project, according to sources close to the investigation.

The investigation into the division, which conducts research on the cause and spread of disease, is the latest problem to afflict the medical school over the last decade.

Questions concerning the epidemiology division and its chief, Hoda Anton-Culver, arose last fall from a regularly scheduled audit, said Assistant Vice Chancellor Susan Menning.

The audit, and a subsequent whistle-blower claim filed by a former employee, triggered the current investigation, which is expected to be completed this month.

Troubled by their preliminary findings, senior university officials have ordered Anton-Culver to spend grant money only with a supervisors’ approval, Menning said.

Citing the ongoing audit, Anton-Culver declined to comment through a university spokesman. Dr. Thomas Cesario, dean of the medical school, and William Parker, vice chancellor for research, also declined to comment.

Much of the inquiry revolves around the epidemiology division’s 2001 contract with KB Quest, a private firm, to design software to process data on California cancer patients, said Bruce Strindberg, the lead UCI auditor in the case until he retired in late June, and a UCI employee who worked on the computer software project and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Physicians in Orange, San Diego and Imperial counties are required to report all cancer cases to UCI as part of a cancer registry program run by the state Department of Health. Bill Dunn, a computer programmer hired by the epidemiology division to work on the software development, and Wang-Chan Wong, president of KB Quest, said the goal of the computer program was to combine two databases that compiled information on cancer cases.

They said Anton-Culver wanted the new software to better process data on California cases for her research before passing the information to the state registry.

University officials are trying to determine whether Anton-Culver was justified in allegedly paying for the software development with grant money approved by federal and state agencies for other purposes.

“The problem is that the [software program] is unrelated to the goals of the grants,” said the UCI employee who worked on the project. “It appears that the [software] project was never presented to anyone for approval and was carried out in spite of not having approval.”

Much of the money to fund the software development, the employee said, was taken from National Institutes of Health multiyear grants totaling $10 million to fund UCI’s participation in two national research projects investigating possible genetic causes of cancer.

With the software only half to two-thirds completed, Dunn and other staff were released in July 2003 when the project ran out of money. National Institutes of Health officials in Bethesda, Maryland, declined to comment on grants to UCI.

Strindberg said auditors are investigating “in excess of $1 million” spent on the software development and other costs. He declined to elaborate on the other expenses under investigation.

According to a UCI spokesman, the contract with KB Quest totaled $616,000 -- of which $435,000 has been paid. Anton-Culver proposed an additional $1 million in software development but never contracted with the company for the work.

The whistle-blower claim and preliminary findings of the audit had garnered an unusual amount of concern from university officials and lawyers, Strindberg said.

UCI officials briefed a committee of the University of California’s Board of Regents on the audit at the board’s meeting in July.

“She does a lot of good research,” Strindberg said of Anton-Culver. “But there were patterns of spending that were not necessarily in accordance with university regulations.”

Since joining the UCI faculty in 1978, Anton-Culver, 62, has specialized in cancer research. Along with conducting studies on possible genetic causes of the disease, she has helped develop cancer registry programs in Mexico and Egypt. She became chief of the division in 1984.

Dunn and others characterized Anton-Culver as strong-willed. At a meeting in February, Dunn said, Anton-Culver defended her decision to fund the software project by reportedly saying, “It’s my department, it’s my money, and I’ll spend it the way I want.”

Irwin Feller, a consultant on federal research grants, said that if a researcher were found to have deliberately diverted money outside the scope of a grant, federal agencies could deny future grants and demand that a university repay the misused funds.

The investigation is the latest problem for the College of Medicine, which has already endured a handful of scandals stemming from a lack of oversight.

A 1999 audit uncovered the unauthorized sale of body parts by the director of the college’s willed-body program. In 1997, cancer researchers improperly charged patients for experimental treatments, and a year later, a doctor used patients’ blood for research without asking permission. In 1995, doctors stole eggs and embryos from scores of women and gave them to other patients.

Strindberg, who also worked on the willed-body audit, criticized university officials for not staffing enough auditors to provide sufficient oversight.