Citing Troubles, Supervisors Split Coroner’s Post in Two : Shake-up: The board decides that both a professional manager and a physician-pathologist are needed to get the job done.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s job is too tough for one person, according to the Board of Supervisors, which voted Tuesday to split the tasks of running the troubled office between a professional manager and a pathologist.

The shake-up was prompted by an audit that sharply criticized the management of the office under former Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Ronald Kornblum, who resigned from the post in April.

Supervisors on Tuesday approved a nationwide search for a lay manager to administer the coroner’s office and a chief medical examiner-coroner to oversee autopsies and other investigations into causes of death. The chief medical examiner, by law, must be a physician.

“Currently, given the extent and nature of the demands made upon the office, the chief medical examiner-coroner must have very high levels of both medical and management abilities,” said Richard B. Dixon, the county’s chief administrative officer, who recommended the restructuring.

“This combination is rarely found in one person. When it is found, it is likely that either the medical or the management responsibilities will not receive the full attention which they require.”

The restructuring was opposed by the Los Angeles County Medical Assn., the Los Angeles Society of Pathologists and the chief of Los Angeles County’s forensic medical division, as well as two national organizations representing medical examiners and pathologists across the country.

During a public hearing last week, Dr. Brian D. Blackbourne, San Diego County’s medical examiner, told supervisors that placing a lay manager in charge of the coroner’s office “will not make the situation better, but instead will make it much worse.”

Blackbourne, representing the National Assn. of Medical Examiners and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, said the supervisors should leave a pathologist in charge of the department and “commit the needed resources and personnel so the job can be done as it needs to be done.”

Dixon said the lay manager, who would be called director of the Department of Coroner, and the chief medical examiner-coroner would be equals, and each would report directly to the Board of Supervisors. Dixon said his recommendation is designed to allow the chief medical examiner to devote his time exclusively to the medical duties “and not be diverted by day-to-day housekeeping of the department.”

Supervisor Ed Edelman, who opposed the change, said it would create “conflict and chaos” in the department.

He said it will be difficult to fix blame for problems. “Whom do we hold responsible?” Edelman said. “The medical examiner is going to point to the administrator, and the administrator is going to point to the medical examiner when there is a problem.”

R. Dennis Persons, president of the Los Angeles County Funeral Directors Assn., supported the restructuring. He pointed out that 53 of the 58 county coroner offices in California are headed by administrators, often sheriffs.

As Los Angeles County coroner, Kornblum made no secret of the fact that he was a pathologist first--for which associates around the county gave him high marks--and an administrator only because he was forced to be one.

Kornblum directed a staff of 160 people who, in 1989, investigated 18,000 suspicious or violent deaths. More than 5,000 of those required autopsies by the office’s physicians.

Kornblum took over the office in 1982 when Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, self-styled “coroner to the stars,” was accused of poor management and lost his job.

A management audit last April concluded that the growing number of homicides in the county is overwhelming the coroner’s office, leading to a breakdown in controls, sanitary standards and protection of personal property. The 319-page report made 155 recommendations.

The coroner’s office was once headed by a non-physician. In 1956, voters approved a County Charter amendment separating the coroner from the public administrator’s office and requiring the coroner to be a pathologist.