L.A. County Plan Would Lay Off More Than 5,000 Health Workers

With a deficit expected to reach $688 million in three years, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services next month will recommend laying off more than 5,000 employees, director Dr. Thomas Garthwaite said Friday.

Faced with state and federal cutbacks, the department must eliminate at least that many jobs and possibly even double the number within several years, spokesman John Wallace said.

The layoffs would begin in October and would hit the “direct patient care staff, administrative care staff, probably the whole gamut of the work force,” Wallace said. The department has 22,000 employees.

The plan will be presented to the county Board of Supervisors on June 18, and Garthwaite will ask that the supervisors begin implementing his proposal in October, Wallace said.

“It’s hard to see any alternatives than to engage in this process,” said Supervisor Gloria Molina’s chief of staff, Miguel Santana. “If we don’t make the cuts now, they will be larger later.”

It is still early in the county’s budget process, and numbers floated at this stage have a tendency to change later. But officials are preparing to do without additional funds from the state and federal governments that would be needed to avoid the layoffs.

In a trip to Washington last week, supervisors tried to persuade Congress and Bush administration officials to delay or reduce certain funding cuts. But they were told “there is no money” in the federal budget, said David E. Janssen, the county’s chief administrative officer.

A spokesman for the county’s largest union, learning of the layoff proposals late Friday, said the numbers were worse than he had imagined, and that officials weren’t doing enough to secure money from state and federal officials.

“There needs to be an intensive effort to win additional funding,” said Mark Tarnawsky, a spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 660.

The proposed layoffs are “simply an exercise in cutting services, vital services, rather than making an aggressive all-fronts effort to fund services,” Tarnawsky said.

Santana, who joined Molina on her trip to Washington, said “the prospects do not look good in funding from the state and federal government.... Mr. Garthwaite is doing the right thing by putting together a plan instead of pretending there is a savior.”

In a meeting with health officials Friday, Garthwaite acknowledged that the cuts mean his department will not meet the needs of the county’s 10 million residents.

“But I don’t think anyone in this room would say we are meeting those needs even today,” he said.

Other aspects of Garthwaite’s proposal to the supervisors include:

* The complete or partial closure of at least two hospitals.

* Major changes at all remaining hospitals.

* Major reductions in trauma and emergency care capacity.

* A lower level of affiliation with medical schools in the area.

Though some details of the proposal are still in flux, officials are considering converting High Desert Hospital in the Antelope Valley and possibly one more hospital into outpatient facilities.

Another option is privatizing the county’s Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center, a rehabilitation center in Downey, so that it would become self-supporting.