Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc

An Orange County executive has resigned after an internal investigation into his employment background and other activities, threatening new turmoil in the management of four major regional hospitals. Bruce Mogel, the president and chief executive of Santa Ana-based Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc., tendered his resignation Tuesday, the company said Friday. The resignation will be effective Dec.

Concern over the sale of four privately owned Orange County hospitals, including one of the county's three trauma centers, will be discussed at a pair of unusual public hearings. The state Senate Health Committee will take testimony from noon to 3 p.m. today at the Anaheim City Council chambers, and the Board of Supervisors will hold a hearing at 1 p.m. Tuesday in Santa Ana. The hospitals are being sold by Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Costa Mesa to Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc. of Costa Mesa.

A group of Orange County physicians announced Thursday it would replace a controversial Hemet surgeon as chief investor in buying four local hospitals in order to quell fears about the new owners. Dr. Anil Shah said his group, Orange County Physicians Network, would at least match the $20-million pledged by Dr. Kali P. Chaudhuri toward buying the hospitals, which are considered critical to the county's emergency healthcare system.

Tenet Healthcare Corp. announced Thursday that it had agreed to sell four Orange County hospitals to a newly formed Costa Mesa-based concern, Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc., for an undisclosed amount. Tenet said it would turn a profit of about $72 million from the sale. The buyer is a publicly traded hospital acquisition and management company. The sale includes two facilities in Santa Ana: Western Medical Center (280 beds) and Coastal Communities Hospital (178 beds).

The current and former chiefs of staff for Western Medical Center-Santa Ana implored Orange County supervisors Tuesday to intervene in the sale of four Tenet hospitals to a Costa Mesa company whose chief financier operated a string of medical clinics that went bankrupt four years ago. It was unclear, however, whether the county could weigh in on the transaction. The doctors, Michael Fitzgibbons and Robert Steedman, said they weren't convinced that Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc.