Leader out at MLK medical center

Antionette Smith Epps, who was brought in to help save Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center but wound up instead presiding over its closing, left Friday, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services officials said.

The county characterized Smith Epps’ departure as a resignation, saying in a brief statement that she wanted “to pursue other career opportunities.”

However, she received a severance package equal to one year’s pay, according to department spokesman Michael Wilson, and the circumstances surrounding her departure were unclear.

Smith Epps’ departure is the latest in a string of recent setbacks in the county’s beleaguered public healthcare system. Last week department director Dr. Bruce A. Chernof resigned, and negotiations with a private entity to reopen King-Harbor collapsed.

The facility’s name now is Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center. It provides outpatient services.

County supervisors are to meet behind closed doors Tuesday to discuss ways to reopen the hospital, which had been renamed King-Harbor shortly before its closing.

They cite an exemption to the state’s open-meetings law as the basis for keeping their deliberations out of the public eye. The exemption allows governments to discuss negotiating points in pending real estate transactions in private.

Supervisors claimed the same exemption during an earlier session on the hospital, when they were advised that real estate covenants surrounding the facility prevented them from selling the property outright and would make it difficult to lease it to a for-profit entity, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

That news led supervisors to lengthy deliberations over a way to entice the University of California to run a reopened hospital, the person said.

“I think this steps over the line,” said Terry Franke, general counsel of Californians Aware, an organization that advocates open government. “It’s not often in my experience that a public agency will dispense with the whole basis of the closed session to go about talking about prospects for a deal without having someone [with whom] they are actually negotiating.”

County Counsel Raymond G. Fortner Jr. said that the closed-door discussion was appropriate and that it was limited strictly to the terms of a real estate agreement with publicly disclosed suitors. County supervisors have publicly said, however, that the only viable candidate to take over King-Harbor -- Pacific Hospital of Long Beach -- has since pulled out of talks.

With Smith Epps gone, community activists fear that what remains of King-Harbor -- mainly an outpatient center -- will go adrift.

“Here we go again, two steps back in this county,” said Lark Galloway-Gilliam, executive director of the advocacy group Community Health Councils. “The absence of leadership has consequences. Who’s minding the shop? Not the Board of Supervisors. They need to build a team there.”

Smith Epps, who could not be reached for comment, will be replaced on an interim basis by Chris Arevalo, currently the administrator for ambulatory care operations with the LAC+USC Healthcare Network.

Smith Epps, whose $261,000 annual salary and county car made her one of the highest-paid employees in the county, took over the struggling hospital in October 2005 after serving as director of systems operations at Baptist Health Systems in Birmingham, Ala.

As the hospital’s first permanent chief executive in nearly four years, she was seen as a positive step toward installing strong leadership and saving the Willowbrook facility.

Less than two years after her arrival, however, King-Harbor shut down after it failed a critical federal inspection and lost its funding.

Smith Epps, whose salary rose by $36,000 during her tenure, went from managing a major facility with 1,500 employees and a $300-million budget to running a smaller outpatient operation with 800 employees.

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jp.renaud@latimes.com garrett.therolf@latimes.com