County-USC Hospital Chief Transferred to New Post : Health: Jerry Buckingham says he was made a scapegoat in the shooting of three emergency room doctors. He plans a legal fight to get his old job back.

The head of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center complex was suspended for five days and transferred to a new assignment in the continuing aftermath of the shootings of three physicians at a hospital emergency room in February, county officials said Monday.

Jerry L. Buckingham said Monday that he plans a legal fight to get his job back, declaring that county Department of Health Services Director Robert C. Gates was making him a scapegoat for the shootings.

“I am really quite angry,” said Buckingham, who will retain his $105,000-a-year salary. “Mr. Gates was looking for a scapegoat.”

Buckingham has hired attorney Godfrey Isaac to handle his appeal. Isaac, a well-known litigator who represented former Coroner Thomas T. Noguchi in two long legal battles with the county, said Buckingham would appeal through the Civil Service system but predicted the case “may very well end up in court.”

A spokesperson for Gates, who was out of town, said the department head declined comment because he did not “believe it was appropriate to discuss individual personnel matters.”

At the center of the blowup is a 1991 report warning the Department of Health Services about dangerous lapses in security at the county hospital. The report contained a series of recommendations aimed at improving security at the hospital. Some of the recommendations were implemented, but many were not. Gates has admitted that he did not even read the report until after the shootings.

One county official, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the disciplinary action, said the shootings capped a series of problems at the hospital.

“It was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back. But there are other problems,” the official said, citing failure to cope with overcrowding and accreditation snags.

Walter Gray, the acting assistant director of the Department of Health Services in charge of hospitals, refused to discuss the suspension.

“I can’t go into the reasons why because at this point it is a private personnel issue,” Gray said. He did say that Buckingham’s transfer was unrelated to the disciplinary action and was part of a reorganization.

Even before Buckingham’s move, the department had been hit by early retirements taken by Edward J. Foley, who had been Gray’s predecessor as acting assistant director of the department in charge of hospitals; Sandra J. Anderson, chief of governmental relations; and Irving H. Cohen, a veteran county official who had headed up the department’s office of administration and finance.

Buckingham was recruited in September, 1986, for the top job at the County-USC Medical Center. He was chief administrator at a large hospital in New Orleans. He served his suspension last week, and on Monday took up his new assignment.

Buckingham will help coordinate a proposed $2-billion construction program to expand, rebuild and replace county hospitals. Part of the project calls for the replacement of the massive County-USC Medical Center, including the landmark General Hospital, where the shootings took place.

In his new role, Buckingham will coordinate construction projects now on the drawing board for the county’s major hospitals.

“It’s a large order, but it is not the same as being executive director of County-USC. I am proud of my record, I know I am a good administrator, and I know patient care has improved at the hospital since I have been there. I am going to fight as hard as I can to make sure that the truth comes out,” Buckingham said.

At the County-USC Medical Center, Buckingham supervised four hospitals--the mammoth General Hospital and its three sister hospitals, the Women’s Hospital, the Pediatric Pavilion and the Psychiatric Hospital--with an annual budget of more than $700 million.