More than 10% of the Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital employees whose backgrounds were examined by the county had criminal histories, according to a long-awaited analysis released Monday that also found the King nurses provided inferior care.
The hospital had about 1,600 employees when the background checks were conducted a year ago, according to the report by the auditor-controller's department. Of those, 1,356 had their backgrounds examined, and 152 of those came back with criminal or arrest records.
The number is far larger than the 17 employees with criminal histories that the county has previously acknowledged and included convictions ranging from misdemeanors (but not most vehicle code violations) to serious felonies.
"If 10% of the employees in my office had criminal records, I'd have a big problem," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. "My level of frustration is very high."
The report was done at the behest of the Board of Supervisors after The Times reported that the county's Department of Health Services had fallen short of supervisors' promise to "wipe the slate clean" of problem employees.
When federal regulators forced the closure of inpatient services at the hospital a year ago, supervisors blamed their own employees for the regulators' finding that the hospital did not meet minimum standards for patient care.
In the cases of 99 of the workers with criminal records, county managers determined that the crime did not prevent the worker from continuing on the job. But the auditor-controller questioned the reasoning used to make that determination. In one case, for instance, county managers decided that it was not a problem that a custodian had been convicted of first-degree burglary and felony grand theft.
Eighteen other employees have been suspended with pay pending an administrative investigation, but some cases languished for six months to a year before the county initiated action.
The audit also found that 29 King employees omitted their convictions on a questionnaire, but none were disciplined and some were improperly allowed by managers to resubmit a corrected form.
King struggled for years with a series of problems, including some mistakes that left patients dead or with serious injuries.
