Review at UCI Finds No Hiring Conflict

An in-house inquiry into the last of six cases of possible nepotism in hiring by UC Irvine’s medical program found nothing improper, officials said Thursday.

The university’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity said it found no violations in the employment of Bruce V. McGraw Jr., the brother of Maureen Zehntner, interim chief executive of UCI Medical Center in Orange.

An earlier report from the office found no conflicts of interest in the hiring of Zehntner’s sister and cousin, medical school Dean Dr. Thomas Cesario’s son and daughter, or the daughter of then-hospital Chief Executive Dr. Ralph Cygan.

The report nevertheless showed that UCI often chose family members for jobs out of large candidate pools.

The hiring inquiry was announced last month after a Times article on possible nepotism in UCI’s medical programs.

McGraw, who was previously hired at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange when Zehntner was a top administrator there, came to UCI Medical Center in 1998 as “principal admit worker” in the hospital call center. His sister had been hired by UCI Medical Center two years earlier as chief operating officer.

McGraw has held seven positions at the hospital since 1998. He earns about $55,000 a year as a network development officer whose duties include distributing brochures to outside doctors.

University of California rules permit someone’s close relative to work in the same department only when it is “in the best interests of the university” and has been approved by the campus chancellor’s office.

UCI said McGraw’s jobs didn’t need chancellor approval because he wasn’t in the same department as Zehntner, the same reasoning used in clearing the five other nepotism cases.

That argument is absurd, ethics expert Kirk O. Hanson of Santa Clara University said last week. “Every individual is in the same department as the CEO of an organization.”

In several cases, Zehntner had to sign off on job transfers for her brother, according to the report. In others, a procedure was set up to avoid a conflict of interest by deferring the job decisions to the hospital’s director of human resources.

Recruiting was conducted for four of McGraw’s seven jobs, the report said. For the rest, recruitment was deemed unnecessary because the position was either a lateral transfer to another department, a temporary position or a reclassification within a department, the report said.