Board Votes to Look at Handing Off Hospitals

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to consider removing hospital management from its list of duties, ordering a “blueprint” for a separate health authority to oversee the county’s five public hospitals.

Amid concern about ongoing lapses in patient care at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, supervisors said a detailed plan would help them decide whether a separate board of healthcare experts could better run the county hospitals.

Nationwide, more than a dozen cities and counties have established separate bodies to run their public hospitals. In Los Angeles, county supervisors have rejected the idea several times in the last 10 years, most recently in 2002.

Tuesday’s 4-1 vote -- with Supervisor Mike Antonovich dissenting -- ordered county staff to craft a comprehensive plan that would also examine how such authorities have worked elsewhere.

“It’s something we need to do, and the time is now,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has long advocated creating a separate health authority. “This is not a short-term fix.”

Other supervisors who voted for the measure expressed more cautious support, but promised to study the issue in the wake of a lengthy critical report on the troubles at King/Drew issued last week by a consulting group hired to overhaul the hospital.

Navigant Consulting’s report cited politics as a disruptive force in running King/Drew and recommended that the board consider removing itself as overseer of all county hospitals.

“Myself, I have questions about it, but I realize that we have to look at some alternatives,” said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. “We have a system here that has some problems.”

Besides King/Drew in Willowbrook, south of Watts, the county runs Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance, County-USC Medical Center in Boyle Heights, and Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey.

Also Tuesday, the board rejected a proposal to hold quarterly meetings on hospital issues. Antonovich had submitted the proposal as an alternative to a health authority, which he said would just add a layer of unnecessary bureaucracy.

“It’s like cotton candy -- a lot of fluff without substance,” he said. “It makes everybody feel good, but it’s not going to solve the problem.”

Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, director of the county health department, said that one advantage of establishing separate bodies to run public hospitals is that such authorities are not bound by civil service and county personnel rules, so they can offer competitive salaries to hire top staff and more easily fire negligent employees.

Garthwaite said that officials should be able to deliver a plan to supervisors within the requested 90 days. “I don’t think there’s that much digging to do,” he said. “The reports that have been done in the past are pretty decent.”