L.A. County supervisors order King-Harbor problem employees probe
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors launched an investigation Tuesday into the failures that allowed problem employees from Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center to continue working in violation of county policies.
Acting Auditor-Controller Wendy L. Watanabe was ordered to complete within four weeks an investigation that will identify the people responsible for the flawed oversight of the problem employees -- those who had county discipline records or who had criminal convictions -- and to recommend reform.
But the supervisors acknowledged that any reforms that improve the tracking of employees would not necessarily be in place before the county moves forward on a long-delayed downsizing of hospital staff, by about 140 employees, next month. Many of them will transfer to other county facilities.
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky proposed the investigation of the oversight of employees after acknowledging that questions from his office and others have so far not resulted in a full accounting by the Department of Health Services.
The auditor-controller "has greater resources to answer the questions I have posed, and the board and public have found their work product to be credible and valuable," Yaroslavsky said.
The Times reported in recent weeks that the county had not fully tracked employees who worked at the hospital in Willowbrook, just south of Watts, when it closed in-patient services a year ago after years of medical errors that led to patient deaths. As a result, the county has been unable to determine whether the disciplinary process had been completed in many cases, whether employees' problems have reoccurred and where the problem employees are working in the county's system of hospitals and clinics.
Additionally, as a result of a review prompted by articles in The Times, the county uncovered neglected records that showed that 17 King-Harbor employees had committed serious crimes or had lied about their criminal histories. Disciplinary action against those employees has begun, but the county has so far refused to identify them or their crimes.
Kathy Ochoa, a lobbyist for Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents most King-Harbor employees, unsuccessfully argued that the investigation should be completed before the county moves additional employees from King-Harbor, now the site of an outpatient clinic that officials consider overstaffed.
