MORENO VALLEY - Riverside County Regional Medical Center's top administrator has resigned after less than three years in the job amid concerns about her management of the hospital.
With Donna Matney's departure, Riverside County has hired a veteran Los Angeles County health care executive as interim administrator until a permanent replacement can be found.
Matney, 49, submitted her resignation Wednesday. County supervisors Tuesday are expected to accept her resignation and discuss related issues that could include severance, county Chief Executive Officer Larry Parrish said. Matney was paid $151,400 annually to run the 364-bed Moreno Valley hospital and its 70-bed psychiatric unit in Riverside.
Reached at home in Chino, Matney said she is quitting but remains on the payroll for now. She referred other questions to Parrish's office.
Matney joined the county in 1993 and was promoted to hospital administrator in April 2000. Over the past few months, she has met three times behind closed doors with county supervisors to discuss the hospital and her performance.
Supervisor Marion Ashley, who took office earlier this month, said doctors and the administrative staff had been unhappy with Matney's management. He declined to be more specific.
"I could see there was a crisis brewing there," Ashley said. "It just came to a head earlier this week."
County supervisors met with Matney earlier this month to evaluate her performance. Matney had offered her resignation but indicated at the time that she really didn't want to leave, Ashley said.
"There was a lot of uncertainty about whether she was going to stay or she was going to go," he said. At the time, the board decided to support her in hopes that unrest at the hospital would settle down.
Parrish said there was "a combination of events that made her decide this was the best thing for her." He declined to elaborate.
During Matney's tenure, the hospital's procedures came under scrutiny because a stabbing victim, Jeffery Owens, bled to death after he was given an overdose of an anti-clotting drug before surgery.
The county hopes to hire a permanent replacement for Matney within six months, Parrish said. In the meantime, Douglas Bagley, a former health care administrator from Los Angeles County, has been hired to run the hospital beginning Monday. Part of Bagley's charge will be to assess what changes are needed to improve the medical center's operations, Parrish said. That's especially important in light of anticipated state budget cuts, he said.
Bagley does consulting for RAND, the Santa Monica think tank, and other firms. Previously, he was acting director of operations for Los Angeles County's Department of Health Services and ran several of the county's hospitals, including LA County/USC Medical Center, which handles more patients than any other hospital in the nation.
Bagley will be on a monthly contract that pays an equivalent of $220,000 a year.
Matney's appointment as administrator came nearly three years after the last permanent administrator had left. County officials said at the time they had difficulty finding qualified candidates who were willing to accept the job at the salary the county was offering.
Parrish and Ashley said they expect the county will have to pay more to attract a good administrator. The top administrator at San Bernardino County's Arrowhead Regional Medical Center earns about $195,000 a year.
"These are high-paying positions right now," Parrish said.
RIVERSIDE - The decision to dismiss a hate-crime allegation against the men charged with murdering Jeffery Owens has disappointed some in the gay and lesbian community. The sentiment was echoed by a hate- crimes expert, who said there is no question the gay man was the victim of homophobic hatred.
But attorneys for some of the five defendants said Riverside County Superior Court Judge Patrick Magers made the right decision when he ruled the attack was not a hate crime.
Owens, 40, was stabbed in June after he and friends got into a fight with the defendants in a parking lot behind two bars on University Avenue. A prosecutor had argued that Owens was targeted by Hispanic gang members because he was gay, making the attack a hate crime.
"I'm very worried that we're not stepping up to the plate because it's a difficult thing to prove," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino. "That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prove it, and that additionally, we shouldn't bring these questions to a jury."
Hate-crime allegation
Frank Peasley, who represents defendant David Leal Martinez, said he didn't think the hate-crime allegation should have been filed.
"I never felt it was a very strong allegation. It just wasn't there. But everyone got excited about it right away, and it kept going."
Mark Johnson, who represents Dorian Lee Gutierrez, praised Magers for not simply leaving the decision up to a jury.
"I think the judge did what he was supposed to do," Johnson said. "This was a fight that had nothing to do with the victim's sexual orientation."
Authorities said Gutierrez stabbed Owens and would have faced a no-parole life term if convicted of murder and a hate crime. He now faces a life sentence if convicted.
Magers said Tuesday that the cause of the assault was "more of a mutual combat situation" between the defendants and Owens and his friends. He also said he did not believe there was enough evidence to find that the attack was a hate crime.
Opposing the ruling
Levin, who has talked to Owens' partner and others involved in the case, said he disagrees with Magers' findings and said the facts of the case, including that the attack occurred near a gay bar and that an anti-gay slur was said, lead to the conclusion of a hate crime.
He said motive is much more difficult to establish than conduct.
"Just because one cannot establish that motive before a jury or a judge doesn't mean it is incorrect to label it as such," Levin said. "This is a crime against community. I think that aspect has to be recognized."
"I'm disappointed. I think the police handled it splendidly. It's my personal conclusion that this was indeed a homophobic hate crime, and I will continue to regard it as such," he said.
Prosecutor Anne Corrado said she disagrees with Magers' ruling, adding that Owens' sexual orientation was a significant motivation for the attack, which is necessary for it to be a hate crime.
The extensive publicity the case received may have hurt the investigation, Corrado said, because the defendants were aware of the significance of the hate-crime allegation and may not have been as open about the motivation for the attack.
Corrado said the defendants were held to answer on the most significant charge -- murder -- after questions were raised about the medical treatment Owens received at the hospital. Owens was accidentally given 100 times more Heparin than he should have received.
Prosecutors can still refile the hate-crime allegation, but Corrado said no decision has been made on whether that will be done.
Not surprised
Owens' partner, Jeff Holland, said he was not surprised by Magers' ruling.
He said he has known all along how difficult it would be to prove a hate crime. Holland said he heard someone in the other group say an anti-gay slur.
"I've gone through my mind 1,000 times what else it could have been," Holland said of why his group was first targeted. "It wasn't a carjacking or a mugging or a robbery. Why else did they come directly toward us?"
Tuesday, after being in court to hear Magers' decision, Shelley Brayton took a daffodil and a sign to the parking lot where her friend had been stabbed.
"If it wasn't hate what was it?" reads the sign that she taped to a tree.
Brayton, 46, said she is concerned about how people will perceive the case now that the hate-crime allegation has been dropped.
"I think the general public is actually going to start believing what the defense is saying -- that this was just a fight behind a bar involving several men and that Jeff Owens provoked the attack, and that's not what happened," Brayton said. "The hate crime part of it reinforces the fact that it was an unprovoked attack."
Reach Lisa O'Neill Hill at (909) 368-9462 or loneillhill@pe.com
Reach Jose Arballo Jr. at (909) 368-9412 or jarballo@pe.com