Countywide

San Diego County supervisors on Tuesday ordered the county’s top administrator to move forward with plans to hire an independent, private consultant to investigate the management and organization in the Department of Health Services.

Chief Administrative Officer Clifford Graves was told to report back to the board in 30 days with the guidelines under which private firms will bid for the contract.

Supervisors Brian Bilbray and Paul Eckert called for the probe, saying in an Aug. 2 press release that “horror stories coming out of Edgemoor Geriatric Hospital, the mental health hospital and elsewhere have resulted in quick-fix, reactionary solutions.”

Among the questions the supervisors want answered is whether such functions as mental health and environmental health should be severed from the $129-million-a-year department, and whether Health Services Director James Forde has mismanaged the huge health bureaucracy.

In slightly more muted terms, Graves, who was forced to resign effective Dec. 31, in part because of problems in the health department, said Tuesday that the management review was needed “to provide the board and the new CAO the data needed to structure a health department which will efficiently and successfully deliver health care services to our county.”