Critical condition

It may have been a minor outrage in the scheme of things, given Los Angeles County’s utter failure to provide adequate healthcare to so many people in such a large swath of territory for so long a period. But still, it was outrageous: Supervisor Don Knabe blamed critical news reports for killing county negotiations with Pacific Hospital of Long Beach to reopen Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital.

“It is going to make our job more difficult because literally these people have been chased away by the media,” Knabe told the Daily Breeze.

Faustino Bernadett, Pacific’s owner, offered similar sentiments. “We are trying to help the community,” Bernadett told The Times. “The negative press has not given us confidence in moving forward.”

The supposedly brutal coverage that derailed healthcare for millions of residents in south Los Angeles County was a pair of straightforward Times stories laying out some obstacles to reopening the hospital and some concern from health and community activists about whether Pacific was up to the job.

No doubt county supervisors and their contractors would be happier if they could do all their work behind closed doors, but an institution unwilling to countenance even the mildest questions about its ability to perform is an unpromising choice, to say the least, to take over a public hospital.

In fact, since talks to reopen King-Harbor began last fall, the media and activists have given the county what amounts to a free pass. County health officials and supervisors pleaded for room to negotiate, and they got it.

Meanwhile, leaders of foundations and medical institutions, with experience, resources, a sense of mission and a spirit of self-preservation -- because the collapse of healthcare in one part of the county triggers a chain reaction that threatens all hospitals and all patients -- quietly urged county government to bring them into the discussion. A very few got seats at the table, but most say their calls and letters went unanswered.

That may be because the five county supervisors know they will be pushed to relinquish their authority to an independent health board. But the supervisors’ own record is dismal, and the pullout of Pacific -- and the decisions by Department of Health Services Director Bruce A. Chernof and King-Harbor Chief Executive Antionette Smith Epps to leave in the middle of the crisis -- does little to inspire confidence in the supervisors’ leadership.

The unwieldy county culture that so baffles outsiders is partly endemic. But it also is a consequence of Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke’s tepid leadership. Burke has long appeared asleep at the wheel or simply worn out by the well-chronicled problems of the hospital in her district. Other supervisors have belatedly tried to fill the void, leaving would-be good Samaritans frustrated by a board that has no single person clearly taking charge of the issue.

Burke’s district needs a vigorous and creative supervisor to request -- no, demand -- that the University of California, UCLA and other public agencies fulfill their taxpayer-funded mission to serve. Such a supervisor should invite private medical providers back to the table and firmly insist that they bring with them more than advice. Such a supervisor must set the bar high, then be prepared to lead the county to do its part -- assembling and overseeing a public-private partnership, if that remains an option, or else relinquishing its day-to-day management to a health authority.

But a new supervisor won’t be elected for at least six weeks and won’t be on the job until December. That leaves the task with the board as it exists today. The supervisors cannot wait. There must be a broader, more public discussion of not just King-Harbor but healthcare in the county. The board’s choice is to lead that discussion or finally get out of the way.