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The El Camino Healthcare District Board took punitive action against now-former Board Chair Julia Miller on Tuesday night following a formal investigation into complaints about her behavior toward El Camino Health employees.
In addition to being formally censured “in the strongest possible terms” for her conduct, Miller will no longer be the board’s chair and cannot hold any officer position through the end of her elected term. She also lost the privilege to hold any board committee positions.
The hospital received the complaints in September and October 2022, which allege that Miller “engaged in harassing and unprofessional behavior” toward three employees on separate occasions, according to an investigative summary.
The results of the ensuing investigation, conducted by an independent third party and released to board members earlier this year, prompted the board to hold a special meeting on Tuesday, May 16, to discuss possible punishments for Miller’s alleged violations of the board standards of conduct.
“The investigation found that Director Miller communicated in an unprofessional and disrespectful manner,” the investigative summary states. “This was inconsistent with the District Board’s standards of conduct requiring directors to ‘communicate with respect and behave professionally.’”
According to the findings, there have been multiple formal complaints and investigations into Miller’s alleged inappropriate behavior in addition to this most recent one, dating back as far as 2015.
In response to the most recent complaints, Miller acknowledged her behavior and apologized in a letter that she sent to her fellow board members ahead of the May 16 meeting.
“I am writing to you individually to express my sincerest apologies for my behavior that was outside the code of conduct,” Miller wrote. “… I am truly sorry. I hope we can move forward for the district and the hospital.”
But during the meeting, Miller denied that she ever acted inappropriately.
“Yes, I made a mistake,” Miller said. “I can guarantee all of you I was not rude, I was not disorderly, there were no inappropriate behaviors.”
In response to the board’s 4-1 decision to censure her and remove her as board chair, Miller accused her fellow board members of bullying and betrayal, and threatened legal action. Miller was the only dissenting vote.
Allegations and investigative findings
According to a summary of the investigation released before Tuesday’s meeting, the recent complaints came from three employees and arose from three separate incidents. Two of the employees alleged that Miller engaged in harassing and unprofessional behavior based on their age, race and ethnicity.
While the investigation did find evidence of Miller’s unprofessional and disrespectful behavior toward two employees, it did not substantiate the claims that Miller’s actions were based on age, race or ethnicity.
“Even though multiple witnesses characterized Director Miller’s communications as attacking, aggressive, bullying, heavy-handed and authoritarian, these same witnesses also said that Director Miller essentially treated everyone the same, including other leaders and their departments, regardless of any protected categories,” the investigative summary states.
The hospital hired Arnold & Porter law firm to conduct the investigation of the three alleged incidents.
In the first incident, Miller allegedly treated a hospital employee inappropriately at a social event sponsored by the hospital in August 2022. The investigation found that Miller was “loud and aggressive in a public setting, spoke to and treated the employee disrespectfully and unprofessionally, and limited the employee’s ability to perform her assigned job duties by insisting that the employee perform other tasks and respond to Director Miller’s demands.”
‘A majority of the witnesses also stated that Director Miller often treated employees in a demeaning and humiliating way, and made them feel like they were beneath her.’
Summary of investigation by Arnold & Porter, third party attorney-investigator
Miller denied these allegations during the investigation. However, the investigator determined that the employee’s account of the situation was more credible than Miller’s because “during her own interview with the investigator, Director Miller was loud, aggressive, and highly emotional, including engaging in profane name-calling of the complainants.”
The employee told investigators she’s experienced extremely poor treatment in a prior job as a reporter, including being spat on, “but that Director Miller’s treatment of her at this event was the worst conduct she had ever received at work.”
A second employee alleged that Miller was disrespectful while communicating with them and “inappropriately escalated concerns to C-Suite executives and other district board members.” While the investigator found that Miller’s actions were “firm, heavy-handed and quintessentially political in nature,” it was not determined that Miller was disrespectful or inappropriate in this particular situation.
The third incident involved Miller’s alleged behavior toward an employee at a reception. According to investigators, the employee said that Miller publicly disparaged them and told them they were “doing a terrible job.”
“The investigator found that Director Miller did make disrespectful and unprofessional remarks publicly about this employee,” the summary states.
The employee also alleged that Miller inappropriately interferes with matters beyond her role as a board member and treats employees as if they report to her. Both of these claims were substantiated by other witnesses, the investigator reported.
“A majority of the witnesses also stated that Director Miller often treated employees in a demeaning and humiliating way, and made them feel like they were beneath her,” the summary states.
Support for Miller
Ahead of Tuesday night’s meeting, Miller submitted letters of support that she had received from community members and elected officials who dispute or question the allegations against her, including from El Camino Health’s Associate Chief Medical Officer Dr. Shreyas Mallur and State Sen. Josh Becker (D-San Mateo).
In a March 7 letter, Mallur said he was sitting next to Miller for the duration of the August 2022 event, where the first incident allegedly occurred.
“She was professional and personable towards me and others that she interacted with while I was sitting next to her throughout the event,” Mallur wrote. “I did not see any other behavior exhibited by Director Miller which would have put El Camino Health in a bad light.”
While Becker was not a first-person witness to the alleged incident, he wrote in a May 14 letter that “the highly regarded doctors that were with her (Miller) that day have clearly disputed the allegations,” adding, “it is my understanding that they were not included in the investigation, which is baffling to me.”
El Camino Health’s Dr. Michael Kan, who previously served as chief of staff, said in a March 6 letter that he spent “greater than 99% of the time at (the) concert in question in Ms. Miller’s company,” and said she was “an appropriate representative of El Camino and behaved in an appropriate and dignified manner at all times while I was there.”
Patterns of alleged misbehavior
Despite these accounts from Miller’s supporters, the third-party investigation ultimately concluded that Miller did act inappropriately on more than one occasion. It further alleged that the latest incidents are part of a pattern of poor behavior toward hospital employees stretching back to 2015.
“Director Miller has previously been the subject of multiple complaints based on similar alleged inappropriate behaviors, which have resulted in prior investigations and agreements by her to engage in counseling, step down from committees and liaison roles and to change her behavior,” the investigative summary states.
‘Good staff and good board members have been bullied by Director Miller and have quit.’
Gary Kalbach, former El Camino Healthcare District and hospital board member
In April 2015, Miller agreed to participate in professional interpersonal skills coaching following an investigation into alleged inappropriate behavior toward an employee, according to the investigation. She also agreed not to attend any hospital committee meetings for three months and apologize to the complainant.
Again in March 2017, another employee complained about Miller’s behavior, prompting an internal investigation. At the time, then-Hospital Board Chair Dr. Peter Fung, who now serves on the district board, told Miller in a statement that she had sent a “very inappropriate and rude email” to an employee and that it was “not an isolated incident,” the investigative summary states.
In November 2019, then-District Board Chair Gary Kalbach wrote that “he had personally noticed an increase in her ‘rude, intimidating and disrespectful’ behavior toward others,” the investigation stated. In response to these allegations, Miller alleged that it was in fact she who had been treated in a negative way by an employee, and claimed she was being targeted because of her age and gender.
“The Hospital hired an independent outside attorney investigator who, after interviewing 15 witnesses and reviewing many documents, found that the employee did not treat Director Miller in a negative or demeaning manner in any of the 10 instances alleged by Director Miller and, in fact, many witnesses said it was Director Miller who had acted aggressively or inappropriately on multiple occasions,” the investigative summary states.
A 2020 incident with a staff member led Miller to enter into yet another agreement with the district board to resolve the complaint that she had acted contrary to the board’s standards of conduct.
Kalbach, who previously served on both the hospital and district boards, was in attendance on May 16 and spoke in support of the resolution to censure Miller for the most recent alleged incidents in 2022.
“The latest actions that caused this report show a repeat bullying behavior and it doesn’t even include any of the incidents that many of us in this room and other employees and directors have witnessed,” Kalbach said. “It’s time to stop this behavior, instead of excusing it, ignoring it or apologizing for it.”
Kalbach said that “good staff and good board members have been bullied by Director Miller and have quit.” He said that hundreds of thousands of district tax dollars have been spent on the various investigations into Miller’s behavior and resulting mediation over the years.
Brenda Taussig, who was employed as El Camino Health’s director of government and community relations for years and retired in 2020, also supported the resolution to censure Miller.
“This meeting is about a pervasive pattern of unprofessional workplace behavior by a person at the highest level of this organization,” Taussig said. “It has had serious morale, legal and financial consequences. … The fact that we’re still discussing this after 10 years of reports is shocking.”
Punitive actions
In response to the investigation into the 2022 allegations of Miller’s inappropriate behavior, district board members John Zoglin, Dr. Carol Somersille and Dr. George Ting jointly brought forward the May 16 resolution calling for a formal censure.
“If we do not protect our employees from the abuse of power, we undermine our entire culture of accountability to deliver the highest quality care we can,” said Zoglin as he introduced the resolution. “Leaders’ lack of action is particularly pernicious if this abuse of power is known in an organization and leaders don’t hold the perpetrator accountable.”
Zoglin added that the repeated nature of Miller’s alleged behavior over the years “drives the need for formal board action.”
Ting said he has worked with Miller in the past on similar instances of behavioral issues.
“It seemed the right thing then (was) to tread lightly,” Ting said of past incidents. “… Yet it’s hard for me, on this fourth cycle, to say we should tread lightly again.”
Ting said the culture of El Camino Health as an organization has to start from the top, and that includes the district’s board members.
“There is a pattern here that has distressed others and has distressed me,” he said.
District Board Vice Chair Dr. Peter Fung was not one of the original three proponents of the resolution. When the 2022 complaints first came to light, as part of an initial mediation, Fung asked Miller to complete four hours of an anger management course, resign from the board’s ad hoc committee, agree not to hold an officer position through the end of her term and send apology letters to two of the employees who made allegations about Miller’s behavior.
Fung said during the May 16 meeting that Miller had since fulfilled the mediated agreement. However, he also supported passing the formal censure resolution, saying that he was unsettled by Miller’s reaction to the allegations.
“I learned something tonight that bothers me quite a bit,” Fung said. “Even though you have agreed to all these mediations, you do not seem to have learned from this experience as well as the repeated events.”
“What bothers me the most,” Fung continued, “is that you are feeling that people are bullying you. It’s not a feeling when people point out what you have done, what you should not have done.”
As her voice wavered with emotion, Miller said to Fung, “I feel betrayed.”
The board voted 4-1 in favor of the formal censure, as well as removing Miller from her position as chair and barring her from serving on board committees, effective immediately.
“It’s very common that if somebody is abusing their power and they are called out on that, very often the response is to portray oneself as the victim, rather than the perpetrator,” Zoglin told the Voice in an interview the day after the meeting. “We did see that kind of behavior last night.”