O.C. Folds X-Ray Safety Program

Trudy R. Papson spent 11 years inspecting X-ray equipment for the county, earning honors in 1993 as an Orange County Woman of the Year. An imaging industry newsletter dubbed her “The Terminator” for her work closing substandard mammography centers.

Monday morning, Papson interviewed for a new job with the county--as a dispatcher for animal control--only to learn by day’s end she had not gotten the job. At least three of her colleagues also remain jobless.

County Health Care Agency officials abruptly folded their 34-year-old radiological health program on June 17, saying they were unable to find a new supervisor.

In the process, the agency left top medical officials throughout the county stunned, saying they could make no sense of the county closing an important, top-rated program that had full state funding. And two county supervisors are looking into whether the decision should be remanded.

The decision also left the program’s five inspectors jobless. Several expressed disbelief and questioned whether the move amounts to retaliation for questions some inspectors raised about county management practices.

Laying off employees because a supervisor could not be found is “an unprecedented, an inexplicable action,” said John Sawyer, general counsel for the Orange County Employees Assn., which represents most county employees.

County officials have asked the state to take over the much-praised program, which inspected thousands of X-ray and mammography machines throughout the county to ensure that they were operating safely and not emitting high levels of radiation. The county will not save any money from the changeover, as the annual budget of more than $500,000 was already financed with state funds.

The action left medical professionals and others mystified.

“I was a little stunned,” said Dr. Steven Armentrout, professor emeritus in oncology at UC Irvine and a former president of the Orange County Cancer Society. “This is one of the top programs of its kind in California, if not the country. I’ve seen a lot of problems with good programs struggling for money that were terminated, but there was funding for it and it was very highly rated.”

Dr. Gary Levine, director of breast imaging at the Comprehensive Breast Health Center at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, called the program closure “a real loss.” He said Papson and another inspector, Beverly Thomas, are “real quality people making a difference for public health.”

“This was a department that was functioning exceptionally with noticeable results,” Levine said. “I don’t know why a department like this would be chosen to be put on the chopping block.”

Ron DiLuigi, assistant director of the Health Care Agency, said the county closed the program because productivity had declined in the last 18 months as attempts to find a new supervisor proved futile. Officials decided they could no longer “nurse it along,” he said.

And a memo to county supervisors, signed by DiLuigi, says that both the state and his agency were concerned about declining productivity.

Edgar Bailey, chief of radiological health for the state Department of Health Services, last week reviewed inspection records for the program from July 1, 1996, to April 30, 1997.

“They were pretty much on target to do the right number of inspections,” Bailey said. Nor were there problems with the quality of the inspections, he said.

Bailey added Monday: “We were concerned there wasn’t supervisory review of staff. . . . We told Orange County they needed to get someone in there.”

County health officials defend the changeover to state inspectors.

“I’ve never heard anything negative about the state [program],” DiLuigi said Monday. “I’ve heard they do an excellent job. They definitely have a leg on us when it comes to recruiting people who want to get into career positions.”

Jack Miller, head of the county’s Environmental Health Division, said he made the decision to close the program after a supervisor hired last year, Robert Gregor, did not pass the probation period. He declined to say why.

He also declined to say why the county hadn’t hired workers within the program who applied for the job.

One laid-off worker, Suzie Kent, who served as public health physicist, said Monday that she twice applied for the supervisor’s job. After being passed over in favor of Gregor, she filed complaints with both the county and federal governments, claiming sex discrimination in hiring, she said.

After she was told June 17 that she was being laid off, Kent said, Miller personally spent three hours watching her pack her things and escorted her out of the building.

“My perception of [the layoff] is that it is probably related to my [discrimination] complaint.”

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Tracy Fairchild, chief of staff to state Sen. Dede Alpert (D-Coronado), said Papson and her colleagues had a reputation for being whistle-blowers and aggressively insisting on strict compliance with state standards protecting public health. That certainly made enemies for them, she said. Alpert authored a 1992 law stepping up mammography inspections statewide.

The state program would not replace everything the county inspectors did, Fairchild said. before, women with questions about their mammograms or specific facilities could call the county for information. The state is not set up to do that, she said.

“That’s one of the reasons the Orange County program was so good,” Fairchild said.

A grievance protesting the layoffs has been filed by the Orange County Employees Assn.

“The circumstances suggest that [the county’s action] may have been motivated by a desire to get rid of employees the department perceived as troublemakers,” said county employees’ attorney Sawyer.

“For them to respond to their failure to find [a supervisor] by eliminating this program and then resorting to the layoff procedure clearly violates the intent of the procedure,” he said.

Board of Supervisors Chairman William G. Steiner and Supervisor Todd Spitzer said they were first told of the closure last week, when Papson spoke at the weekly board meeting pleading for the program’s reinstatement. Both are looking into the matter.

Stacy Leff, an aide to Spitzer, said he is concerned that transferring critical inspection duties to the state might jeopardize women’s health. The state already handles radiologic inspections for every county except Los Angeles and San Diego, which have their own programs.

“Our office has been in contact with the state board of radiological health,” Leff said. “We’ve found out this process isn’t by any means irreversible.”

Steiner said he, too, was looking into what happened.

“The board has a duty to reassure the public that this action was taken for the right reasons,” Steiner said.

Papson said Monday that she had interviewed for the animal control job “as a last-ditch effort” to preserve her retirement and other benefits.

“We are rallying the women of Orange County who have been served” by the program to help preserve it, she said.

Jean O. Pasco is a Times correspondent; Deborah Schoch is a Times staff writer.