Metro South Provider Network

For more than four years, Los Angeles County paid millions of dollars to a private network of community clinics run by a doctor who was supposed to be working at a public hospital while earning his six-figure county salary, according to health department officials.

For more than four years, Los Angeles County paid millions of dollars to a private network of community clinics run by a doctor who was supposed to be working at a public hospital while earning his six-figure county salary, according to health department officials.

To keep public services running smoothly and crises to a minimum, Los Angeles County needs a contracting process in which department heads and other bosses are held to well-defined standards that are overseen without favoritism by county supervisors. This is not nanotechnology.

Launching a new era of public health care in Los Angeles County, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved the largest expansion of outpatient health clinics for the poor and uninsured in the county's history. The addition of 36 new clinics is the first stage in a sweeping restructuring of the county's health system from an emphasis on expensive hospital treatment to less costly preventive and primary care in the community.