Civil Service Panel Charges Black Bias at King Hospital : Workplace: Commission says facility discriminates in hiring, promoting doctors. Officials deny charges.

In an unprecedented rebuke of Los Angeles County’s management of Martin Luther King Hospital in Watts, the county Civil Service Commission has ruled that the hospital has tried to “maintain itself as a black institution” by promoting doctors and hiring residents based on race rather than merit.

The commission recently voted to accept a hearing officer’s conclusion that there is an “institutional pattern of discrimination” at the hospital that penalizes non-blacks. The commission’s preliminary action had been scheduled for a final vote Wednesday but was postponed until next week.

The action caps a tumultuous 18 months in the hospital’s busy trauma center, known for its medical challenges and high percentage of poor patients but also a hotbed of racial unrest among senior physicians, who have occasionally almost come to blows.

Three doctors have served recently as the hospital’s trauma chief--with each appointment triggering allegations of racial discrimination, lawsuits or grievances. The Civil Service Commission sided 3 to 0 in April with a veteran King physician, Dr. Subramaniam Balasubramaniam, who charged that he was repeatedly overlooked as a candidate for the hospital’s top post in emergency medicine because of his race.

After a prolonged hearing on the case brought by the Indian-born physician, a hearing officer found that King Hospital and the affiliated Drew Medical School have an “unwritten policy of maintaining itself as a black institution and of placing black candidates in positions of leadership . . . to the exclusion of non-blacks.”

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Top county health officials declined to comment. Jeffrey Hausman, the private attorney representing the county, denounced the hearing officer’s report as “totally inadequate and . . . unprofessional.” He has asked the commission to set aside its initial decision, reject the report and hold a new hearing.

King’s administrator, Jaron Gammons, denied that the hospital discriminates in any way and dismissed the hearing officer’s conclusions as “mere allegations.” She said hiring and promotions are made irrespective of “race, religion, creed or anything. . . . The county is colorblind. We look for qualified candidates.”

The hospital, a legacy of the Watts riots, was opened in 1974 to treat a long-underserved population, mainly black, in that area. But with changing demographics in the area, 70% of King’s patients are now Latino.

Since 1991, the hospital and county health department have been under orders by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to increase its percentage of Latino employees.

But county hearing officer Terri A. Tucker concluded in her report in January that she is “persuaded . . . that the officials of [Martin Luther King] and Drew University, together, or as agents of one another, have demonstrated a pattern of discrimination in favor of blacks, and against non-blacks.”

In particular, she found that the hospital has had a policy of adding 10 points to the scores of young black doctors applying for residency training in King’s emergency department.

“It’s an absolutely devastating finding about which the Board of Supervisors should immediately take action,” said Rees Lloyd, attorney for Balasubramaniam. “Black racism is no more acceptable than white racism, and this case is manifestly an indictment of black racism and the operation of King Hospital.”

King’s emergency department, with its busy trauma center, is the point of entry for the vast majority of the hospital’s patients. It is a linchpin in the county’s fragile emergency services network of trauma centers.

For 13 years after it opened, the emergency department drifted without a permanent chairman. Balasubramaniam, who joined King in 1978, served for a while as its acting chief, but was removed in late 1985, he contends, when he refused to designate a black doctor as his successor.

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Dr. William Shoemaker, a veteran surgeon who is white, was appointed the department’s first permanent chief in 1991--with the understanding that he groom a younger black physician, Dr. Eugene Hardin, to take over the post in about three years, the hearing officer concluded.

In late 1993, the agency that accredits graduate medical training programs nationwide threatened to shut down the emergency medicine training program at King, and Shoemaker was demoted.

He filed a lawsuit alleging that he was removed from the chief’s position because of his race and age and won reinstatement, but the decision is under appeal by the county.

The hearing officer concluded that soon after Shoemaker’s demotion, hospital officials circumvented Civil Service rules and appointed interim Chairman Dr. Range Hutson, a black physician, whose “qualifications, though promising, do not compare to those of his more senior colleagues” at King. Although Hutson received no fringe benefits, the county paid him far more than most other doctors--$240,000 a year, which was taken out of the hospital’s account for services and supplies, records show.

A few months into Hutson’s tenure, the department was in major turmoil.

Shoemaker alleged in a sworn declaration that Hutson had berated and threatened him “using the most disgusting gutter language” in a confrontation in the doctors’ dining area.

Another white physician, Dr. Harry Kram, sued Hutson for illegally firing him and charged in a declaration that Hutson had threatened him in the hospital corridor by adopting a “combative posture with fists clenched” and using vulgarities. Hutson, who could not be reached for comment, has previously denied ever threatening any physician.

Kram was immediately reinstated by the hospital. And a Superior Court judge granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting Hutson from threatening Kram with violence.

Two other emergency physicians, Gary Ordog and Jonathan Wasserberger, both white, also filed grievances against Hutson.

In November, about a dozen emergency department physicians, including several African American doctors, signed a petition to “implore” county health officials to remove Hutson from supervising the emergency department because of his “poor management and supervisory skills, unprofessional interactions with faculty and inappropriate language . . . in the presence of patients, families, nurses and staff.”

Hutson testified at the Civil Service hearing that the spate of complaints against him resulted from his crackdown on doctors who were not working hard enough. Hospital officials have defended Hutson as a highly qualified physician who formerly worked at County-USC Medical Center. And they pointed out that at the time he was hired, he was board-certified in emergency medicine, unlike Balasubramaniam or Shoemaker.

Hutson resigned about two months ago. Hardin is now the acting chief of emergency medicine, although the hearing officer concluded that Hardin, like Hutson, was a comparatively weak candidate for the post.

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The hearing officer based her conclusion partly on a recent review by a national accrediting agency of the residency training program that faulted Hardin’s supervision during the last few years.

Hardin said in an interview that the accrediting agency has retracted its criticisms and that he was upset he was not given a chance to testify at the Civil Service hearing.

The training program, which is among the largest in the country and is directed by Hardin, selects about 40 young doctors for training at King.

The hearing officer reported that Hardin “instituted new rules regarding the selection of new residents” that favored black applicants and penalized others, including minorities.

The hospital “either has, or had, under Dr. Hardin, a policy of adding 10 points to the scores of black applicants for the department of emergency medicine residency program in order to increase the number of black residents, to the exclusion of non-black applicants,” the hearing officer concluded.

Hardin said in an interview that he “never, never, never” added points to the scores of black applicants but that the faculty as a whole can occasionally change an applicant’s final ranking.

Hardin said that the residents at King are a heterogeneous group of 44 young doctors “from every race and culture.”

He acknowledged that during the last two years, their average score on national exams measuring their medical knowledge has declined. Nearly one-third of the residents scored in the bottom 10% of the nation when they were tested recently, records show. Eleven will be given letters of warning about their performance and will be re-evaluated.

“There were some low scores . . . more than I would like to discuss,” Hardin said, adding that the education of residents has been affected by “a lot of turmoil” in the department.