Doctor on County Payroll Despite Fraud Conviction : Health: King/Drew psychiatrist pleaded guilty in August. He was placed on leave Wednesday.

A Los Angeles County psychiatrist, convicted of grand theft of Medi-Cal funds and corporate tax evasion nearly four months ago, has remained on the county payroll as a top administrator at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center’s psychiatry center, health officials confirmed Wednesday.

On Aug. 9, Dr. Buford Gibson Jr. and two co-defendants pleaded guilty to various felony charges, including defrauding the state Medi-Cal program of more than $150,000 while operating their private Institute of Advanced Therapy counseling clinic in Inglewood during 1991 and 1992.

Gibson also works at King/Drew’s Augustus F. Hawkins mental health facility, where he has held many top appointments, including his current responsibilities as director of outpatient psychiatric services, hospital officials said.

Yet top administrators at the hospital and the county Department of Health Services said they were not aware of Gibson’s conviction until asked for comment by The Times--even though his plea agreement was entered in open court after lengthy negotiations with state authorities who believed the fraud was as high as $1.3 million.

State authorities, who have been investigating Gibson and the counseling center since at least 1990, also subpoenaed Gibson’s county personnel records in July and told county officials it was for a criminal case, said Deputy Atty. Gen. Malcolm Venolia.

“Certainly the plea agreements were entered in open court and no one hid that fact from the county,” said Vicki Podberesky, Gibson’s lawyer.

On Tuesday, Gibson and his co-defendants each were sentenced to two years in a halfway house, five years felony probation, $500,000 in restitution to the Medi-Cal program and other stiff penalties by Superior Court Judge William R. Hollingsworth. Most of the charges involved the clinic illegally billing Medi-Cal for services--allegedly provided by licensed psychiatrists--that were actually provided by non-licensed counselors, or for billing for counseling services that had not been given at all, court documents show.

After being notified by The Times of Gibson’s conviction and sentencing, county Assistant Health Director Walter Gray said Wednesday that he will move quickly to take Gibson off the payroll and begin the civil service process of firing him.

A statement issued Wednesday evening by the hospital said, “Dr. Gibson has been placed on leave pending an internal investigation.” It could not be determined whether he was still being paid.

Neither Gibson, who was paid $102,000 a year by the county, nor co-defendants Archie James Kirk and Jade Van Keahey returned calls seeking comment. Gibson is a licensed psychiatrist and served as the clinic’s medical director, but neither Kirk nor Van Keahey were licensed to provide counseling services, though both counseled patients and managed the clinic, authorities said.

Podberesky said the three accepted the plea bargain even though they believed the charges were unfounded, were based on vague Medi-Cal billing policies and were racist (the three are black).

According to one search warrant affidavit, a woman told authorities she brought her son to the clinic just once, but evidence showed the clinic billed Medi-Cal for 32 claims for the mother and five for her son. Venolia said Gibson occasionally billed the state for more than 24 hours worth of counseling in a single day between King/Drew and the clinic.

Despite the longstanding criminal case, county officials never launched their own investigation into Gibson’s work for the county.

“They should have known about it,” said the health department’s investigations chief, Fred Leaf, of King/Drew officials. “Something like that, you make a note of it and follow up on it.”

County Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed also said the health department should have taken steps to ensure that Gibson wasn’t involved in any potentially fraudulent activities in his role as a county psychiatrist and administrator.

“Any involvement in Medi-Cal fraud is of utmost concern to me, and I’d want to know what we are doing to make sure that isn’t happening in the county,” Reed said. “We should have certainly assured that we were looking at his activities or that we had checks and balances to make sure our organization was also not making inappropriate filings.”

King/Drew Medical Director Dr. Edward Savage said Gibson never had anything to do with billing at the hospital, and that administrators did know about the investigation. He defended their inaction by saying, “If you knew how many rumors are circulating . . . you would know it would be impossible to investigate all of them.”

Just weeks after Gibson’s plea, the county laid off the largest number of doctors, psychiatrists and health workers in its history. Gray said officials didn’t include Gibson in the layoffs or move to fire him because they was not informed of the felony conviction. “We didn’t know,” Gray said.