County Backpedals on Hiring of King/Drew Chief

Consultants come and consultants go, but Anthony Jones was gone before he arrived.

Los Angeles County announced in April that Jones, a hospital turnaround specialist, would take over temporary management of the troubled Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. After that, Jones said Tuesday, he waited to hear more on when he would begin work. He said his phone never rang.

The county’s health department director, Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, said Thursday that Jones would not be hired as King/Drew’s interim chief executive officer. He was no longer needed, Garthwaite said.

Negotiations with a consulting firm representing Jones had bogged down over precisely what services the company, Superior Consulting, would provide, Garthwaite said. A proposed one-year contract would have paid the Michigan-based consulting firm $466,800 for the services of Jones and a support staff. Meanwhile, Garthwaite said, county officials have already made “significant progress” toward fixing the problems at the public hospital just south of Watts.

State and federal inspectors have cited the 233-bed hospital for a pattern of lapses in care, including errors that contributed to the deaths of five patients last year.

David Runke, a top executive at County-USC Medical Center, has headed a temporary management team at King/Drew since October. In December, that team was augmented by an emergency task force led by Fred Leaf, Garthwaite’s No. 2 in the Department of Health Services.

Since then, Garthwaite said, the hospital has corrected most of the problems identified by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and California’s state licensing agency, and has been accredited by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

That progress, “combined with the cost of this consultant,” persuaded officials it would be better to wait and hire a permanent CEO -- at a substantially lower salary -- than to hire the consultant, Garthwaite said.

The hospital’s progress has not been without setbacks.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services threatened anew to cut off its funding to King/Drew -- more than half the hospital’s $350 million annual budget -- after revealing that hospital staff members have used Taser stun guns to subdue psychiatric patients. Also, while the hospital was accredited by the Joint Commission last month, it was under the condition that it fix 14 remaining problems.

Reached by phone, Jones said he wished Garthwaite’s department well. Asked if he found the county’s lack of communication bizarre, he replied: “You said bizarre; you won’t hear me arguing with you.”

But Garthwaite said county officials were instructed by Superior Consultants not to deal with Jones directly. He said the company should have kept Jones abreast of the negotiations.

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Times staff writer Charles Ornstein contributed to this report.