The outside consultants being paid $15 million to overhaul Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center now stand accused by auditors of transgressions similar to those they were hired to prevent: billing for hours their staff did not work.
In a report released Monday, Los Angeles County auditors also said Navigant Consulting Inc. had failed to act on "urgent" recommendations it had promised to complete by Feb. 28. Nearly four months later, almost a third of those reviewed had not been done.
The audit is the latest twist in the months-long saga of mismanagement at the public hospital, which serves a predominantly poor and minority population around South Los Angeles. Navigant has recommended that hundreds of King/Drew employees be disciplined for poor work habits, lapses in medical care and fraud, including lying on timecards.
Now, Navigant's performance itself has come into question.
"Navigant is not up to the job of turning this facility around," county Supervisor Mike Antonovich said in response to the audit. "They have failed to meet their own deadlines or to implement the reforms they determined are the most urgent. Their billing practices for staff reflect the malfeasance they were hired to eliminate."
Navigant officials said they are proud of the work they have done at King/Drew. Although some tasks were not completed on time, Navigant managing director Kae Robertson said, nearly 100% are either done or in progress.
"There's a very serious need for improvement at the hospital, and we are making progress and our team is working very hard to do that," she said.
When it was hired last fall under pressure from federal regulators, Navigant said it understood the depths of King/Drew's woes and could turn the hospital around for $13.2 million.
Less than six months later, Navigant asked for more money, maintaining that the problems were far worse than it anticipated. On May 10, the county Board of Supervisors agreed to give the firm $1.8 million more.
In Monday's report, however, the county auditor-controller found that "Navigant did not appear to always provide the required full-time, on-site staff."
The firm billed the county Department of Health Services for its full monthly payments from November 2004 to this April, auditors said, even though some staff were "off site or on vacation at various times."
