King-Harbor hospital to fire 19 over criminal records
An additional 45 will be disciplined. Officials say breakdowns by human resources bureau may have allowed workers with criminal histories to have improperly obtained other health jobs.
At least 19 Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital employees will be fired and 45 others disciplined after a breakdown in vetting allowed scores of people with criminal records to remain on staff even after background checks indicated their past crimes, Los Angeles County officials said Tuesday.
The move to rid the staff of the most serious criminal offenders came as the interim director of the Department of Health Services acknowledged for the first time that failures by the human resources bureau overseeing the county's 17,000 health service workers may extend well beyond King-Harbor.
John Schunhoff, under questioning by Los Angeles County supervisors, said it was possible that many workers at the county's other public hospitals and clinics could be employed despite disqualifying criminal offenses.
"I don't think that any of us can guarantee you that those at the other facilities were treated appropriately by the human resources staff," Schunhoff said at Tuesday's board meeting. "What's to tell me that you aren't going to be up here in six months telling me that we have a lawsuit from a nurse at County-USC hospital who says she was raped by a chronic rapist who should have been eliminated but wasn't?" Supervisor Gloria Molina asked.
Schunhoff did not respond.
Supervisor Mike Antonovich asked county staffers to return in two weeks to report on what can be done to ensure that criminal histories have been properly tracked and evaluated throughout all county departments -- a request that may prove difficult given restrictions on when criminal background checks may be performed.
The move to fire the King-Harbor workers came only after months of questions about why Department of Health Services officials were slow to act on news that its employees had committed serious crimes.
A relatively complete review of King-Harbor employees was only possible because 1,356 of the 1,600 people on staff had their backgrounds examined last year.
Those checks were made as the hospital was forced to shut down after federal regulators said it had failed to meet minimum standards for patient care.
As the county downsized the facility, keeping only clinic services open, officials promised to "wipe the slate clean" of problem employees at the long-troubled site.
At that time, many of the hospital's employees were being considered for transfers to other jobs throughout the county, clearing the way for new background checks.
