UC Irvine Anesthesiology Section Head to Step Down
The embattled chairman of UC Irvine’s anesthesiology department said Friday he would step down next summer.
Dr. Peter Breen, who is under investigation by the state medical board, said he wanted to devote more time to research. He will remain on the faculty after his term expires in July.
The announcement came a week after a heated anesthesiology department meeting at which several professors confronted Dr. Thomas Cesario, UCI’s medical school dean, and Maureen Zehntner, interim hospital chief executive, about Breen’s leadership, according to two doctors who were at the meeting. The doctors requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
At one point, two physicians asked Breen to leave the room so professors could talk about him with Cesario, another doctor said, but Breen refused.
Breen declined to discuss the session, saying faculty meetings are confidential. UCI officials said Cesario also wouldn’t comment, and Zehntner wasn’t available.
The meeting was held Sept. 7, a day after a Times article disclosed that Breen and his former clinical vice chairwoman, Dr. Anne Wong, were under medical board investigation.
Although California Medical Board officials wouldn’t discuss the reason for the probe, a spokeswoman said it involved issues that were already public record. The inquiry is probably focused on allegations made in a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed last year by Dr. Glenn Provost, a former UCI anesthesiology professor.
Provost’s attorney, Katrina Foley, confirmed that a medical board investigator recently sought a meeting with her client, who alleges that patients at UCI Medical Center in Orange were wheeled into operating rooms without proper consent or charts and that nurses’ signatures were sometimes forged on pre-operation records.
Breen called the accusations ridiculous. “To insinuate that I’ve got doctors cutting corners on patient care and not doing proper paperwork is laughable,” he said. “I’m an extremely diligent physician. I’ve never had a malpractice complaint against me, and I have never lost a patient.”
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