Mental Hospital Relieves Doctor Who Alerted State to Problems

A psychiatrist who was the first to alert state authorities to widespread problems at San Diego County’s Hillcrest mental health hospital has been relieved of his medical duties.

Dr. Zalmin Magid, a county psychiatrist for six years, said Thursday that he has been ordered to perform menial tasks in the office of Harold Mavritte, acting medical director of the mental hospital, known as CMH.

Magid said he has been told his status with the county is to be decided at a meeting with his superiors next week.

Magid said he believes the action against him is in retaliation for his criticism of the hospital, which began earlier this year when he sent a letter outlining his allegations to state health officials.

“They are doing this to me because I notified the state about the problems at CMH,” Magid said.

David Janssen, the county’s acting chief administrative officer, declined to identify Magid by name but confirmed that one psychiatrist at the hospital had been relieved of his medical duties and two others had been told that they would not be kept on after six-month probationary periods. Another doctor was warned that he will not pass probation if his work does not improve. But Janssen denied that the moves were retaliatory.

Janssen said the personnel moves were part of an ongoing effort to improve the quality of care at the 60-bed hospital. The county has been notified by the state and federal governments that it could lose its certification to receive Medicare and Medi-Cal funds if conditions at Hillcrest do not improve.

“We are committed to take whatever action is necessary to bring that facility into compliance with state regulations,” Janssen said. “To single out one out of four personnel actions and indicate that this is retaliation is ridiculous.”

But Larry Stirling, a state assemblyman from San Diego who helped Magid expose the problems at the hospital and has been a constant critic of county health programs ever since, called the move against Magid “an outrage.”

“I know Magid and have talked with him personally,” Stirling said. “I have sat with him for hours in a room, testing his sincerity. Magid is the one guy in the entire group who I walked away from with the feeling that here is a dedicated, honest man who is willing to stand up in spite of the obvious political or professional problems for himself. And, by God, along comes the bureaucracy and counterattacks.”

Magid, 48, was educated at Cornell University and Howard University, and performed residencies at Bellevue Hospital in New York and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. A licensed child and adult psychiatrist, Magid has worked for the county for six years.

In May, state and county health authorities launched investigations after Magid alleged that four patients who had been treated at the hospital in six months had died as a result of “poor judgment” on the part of other CMH doctors.

A joint investigation by the state departments of Health and Mental Health concluded in August that two of the four deaths cited by Magid could have been prevented.

Magid said Thursday that pressure on him from superiors has increased over the last several months as the widespread problems at Hillcrest were revealed. He said Mavritte and Karenlee Robinson, the hospital’s new administrator, informed him Wednesday that he had been relieved of his medical duties.

Thursday, Magid, who is earning $80,000 a year, was told to go through a department policy manual page by page and cite policies that contained the titles “chief of adult services” and “chief of child and adolescent services.” Officials need to know which policies make reference to those titles because they are going to be changed.