KPC Medical to Consolidate, Lay Off Workers

KPC Medical Management, which purchased many of the clinics and physician groups sold by MedPartners Inc., said it will lay off an undisclosed number of employees and consolidate several offices. The private Long Beach company plans to merge 29 satellite clinics in Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties into its larger patient care centers. “Simple math demands that we reorganize or perish,” President Donald Smallwood wrote to the company’s 5,200 employees Wednesday. When the operations were purchased from MedPartners, Smallwood said, they were running at a deficit of $9 million a month. MedPartners sold its operations here last summer, after losses prompted the company to quit the physician practice management business, and a subsidiary was taken over by California regulators.