Burbank Facility : Director Ends Hospital Feud by Resigning

Burbank Community Hospital Director Jurral Rhee, whose policies have been criticized by Los Angeles County health officials and doctors for almost a year, resigned Tuesday.

The resignation came after a Monday night meeting of the hospital’s board of trustees, which discussed Rhee’s recent difficulties and the unhappiness of the staff, board chairman James Corradi said.

Rhee could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Corradi said the board came to a decision regarding Rhee, but declined to reveal that decision. He met with Rhee Tuesday morning.

“I told Mr. Rhee about our discussions, and when he heard the whole situation, he resigned,” Corradi said. “He was not asked to resign. But when he heard the whole situation, he decided to resign rather than an alternative.

Effective Immediately

“He’s done a good job as far as I’m concerned,” Corradi added. “But the situation is such that he didn’t want to stay anymore.”

Corradi said that the resignation was effective immediately, and that he would be acting administrator of the hospital until a new one is hired.

“I’m elated,” said Dr. J.O. Sarkin, who has practiced at Burbank Community for 20 years and had complained about Rhee. “I now believe that morale in the hospital will improve, and that patient care will get better.”

Sarkin said Rhee’s recent attempts at cutting costs at the hospital had damaged patient services and compromised the quality of health care. He said physicians had reduced the number of patients they refer to the hospital.

“Those doctors just were not happy with the facility as it was, and the course on which Mr. Rhee was steering the hospital,” Sarkin said. “The cost-cutting was impinging on our patient care, but he was not responsive to our concerns.”

Rhee had weathered a storm of controversy since September, 1987, when the Los Angeles Department of Health Services investigated complaints that the facility was not administering proper emergency care to indigents. The investigation found more than 20 deficiencies at the facility.

Medicare Status Jeopardized

Rhee denounced the charges, saying that the county’s investigation was “castrating this hospital and the 350 employees who make their livelihood here,” and that health officials were overzealous and carrying out a vendetta against him.

During subsequent months, county health officials ordered paramedics not to take patients to Burbank Community Hospital. The Burbank city attorney’s office considered filing criminal charges against the hospital. Federal health officials told Burbank Community that its status as a Medicare provider was in jeopardy.

Rhee relented, and filed a correction plan that satisfied county health officials. But his problems were not over. Some doctors voted to oust Rhee at a meeting of the hospital staff last May. In July, 26 of the 35 physicians at the hospital signed a petition calling for Rhee’s removal.

Rhee had been in charge of Burbank Community, a licensed Medicare hospital with a 24-hour emergency room, for more than five years. Before that, he was administrator for Lake View Medical Center, now defunct, for five years.

The county’s investigation last year began after a transient, Robert Parks, was found outside the hospital the day after he had been treated there for lice. Despite pleas from Burbank police officers, physicians refused to admit Parks again, saying he had already been properly treated.

Parks was then transported to County-USC Medical Center, where doctors said he was suffering from malnutrition, anemia, dehydration and alcoholic withdrawal. They said his condition was critical.

“By what stretch of the imagination is it our responsibility to hospitalize someone like that?” Rhee had said at the time. “If you go along Skid Row and you pick up 10 transients or winos, how many of them do you think would be suffering from delirium or malnutrition or anemia?”

Police had also complained at about the same time that a homeless woman who was treated after a severe beating still had blood dripping from her face and bandages after she was discharged.

Among other things, county health investigators said the hospital “failed to assure that properly trained and qualified personnel were assigned to the emergency department.” The investigators added that the administrators allowed some physicians to administer emergency care without proper certification, and that Rhee and the hospital’s board of trustees were ineffective administrators.

When Rhee criticized the report, Ralph Lopez, director of the health facilities division of the county’s health department, threatened to recommend that the hospital be closed if Rhee missed the deadline for filing a correction plan.

Rhee responded: “We never received a cover letter telling us of any deadline. They should have sent a letter. . . . They screwed up.”

As the controversy continued, federal health officials warned that the hospital’s status as a Medicare provider was in jeopardy. A preliminary plan to correct the deficiencies was rejected by county officials as inadequate.

Rhee softened, apologizing to Lopez, and said his remarks about the investigation had been blown out of proportion.

“I wanted to stop the fomenting of a problem that was not there,” he said last November. “I never criticized what they did. I wanted to show there was no malice on my part.”

A revised correction plan was submitted and accepted by authorities. Rhee admitted that the hospital had been “lackadaisical” in some areas of bookkeeping and administration, and said that the county’s criticism would “make us a better institution.”