Settlement of Hospital Bias Suits Urged

A Los Angeles County panel has recommended paying $540,000 in public money to settle lawsuits by two emergency-room physicians at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center who allege that they were discriminated against because they are white.

Between the two of them, Jonathan Wasserberger and Gary Ordog filed more than 140 employment grievances before alleging in a pair of 1998 lawsuits that the African Americans who headed emergency medicine at the hospital south of Watts subjected them to harassment and threats because of their race.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider the proposed settlements Feb. 29.

The recommendation this week from the county’s claims board comes on the heels of an appeals court’s upholding of a scathing county Civil Service Commission’s ruling that King/Drew has an “unwritten policy of maintaining itself as a black institution and of placing black candidates in positions of leadership . . . to the exclusion of non-blacks.”

That appeals decision last month was in the case of a doctor of Sri Lankan ancestry and former head of the hospital’s emergency medicine department who was repeatedly passed over in his efforts to regain his post. The appeals court ordered that a Superior Court begin a trial to determine the monetary damages due to Dr. Subramaniam Balasubramaniam, or Dr. Bala, as he is known to his colleagues.

Rees Lloyd, the lawyer who has represented all three plaintiffs, said Wednesday that the three cases demonstrate “a pattern and practice of black racial discrimination at MLK/Drew Medical Center which has been tacitly condoned by the Board of Supervisors.” Lloyd noted that Balasubramaniam’s legal complaints date to 1985 and that his attorney then was Yvonne Brathwaite Burke--now the county supervisor whose district includes the hospital.

In an interview, Burke said the medical center has the most diverse group of department heads in the county.

“Reverse discrimination is a popular issue,” Burke said. “You can go into every hospital in this county and you can have some charges of racial discrimination. . . . With 80,000 [county] employees and 14,000 in the health department, you do get” lawsuits.

Burke added that she believes Balasubramaniam is an excellent doctor but is lacking in the technical credentials to run the emergency room--an assessment that contradicts the county Civil Service Commission’s findings.

Dr. Donald Thomas, the associate director of the county’s health department, acknowledged that some of the managers who were the subject of the legal complaints remain at King/Drew but said the problems had been addressed and the managers “are all being supervised more closely because of it.”

King/Drew Medical Center was built in 1974 as a response to the 1965 Watts riot, and today its emergency room is one of the busiest in the nation and the point of entry into the public health system for uninsured residents of South Los Angeles. The hospital is affiliated with Drew University, the sole black-run medical school on the West Coast.

Balasubramaniam came to the hospital in 1978 to set up the emergency room, according to county documents, and Ordog and Wasserberger joined the staff in 1980.

The allegations in the three cases all stem from a tumultuous period in the early 1990s when the chairmanship of emergency medicine shifted through a series of doctors.

Balasubramaniam, who had been serving as interim chairman of the department, repeatedly applied to become the permanent chairman but was rebuffed because he would not agree to groom a black successor, according to the appeals court ruling. Ordog, too, was in the running for the chairmanship.

In 1991 the hospital made 70-year-old Dr. William Shoemaker, a white surgeon, chairman of the department. According to the Civil Service ruling, Shoemaker tried to appoint Balasubramaniam as vice chairman but was forced to accept Dr. Eugene Hardin, who was black and who the Civil Service Commission found had added 10 points to the scores of African American applicants to the department’s residency program to increase the number of black doctors.

In 1993, a medical accrediting body threatened to withdraw its accreditation of the emergency room because Shoemaker, though distinguished, was not certified in emergency medicine, according to court documents. Shoemaker was replaced by Dr. H. Range Hutson, a black physician who was later replaced because he was not part of the county Civil Service.

Hutson was followed by Dr. Edward Savage, a gynecologist who was not certified in emergency medicine. Meanwhile, according to the Civil Service Commission, Balasubramaniam was told he could not serve in the post because he was not certified in emergency medicine. The commission noted that accreditors will allow doctors with experience comparable to certification in emergency medicine to serve as department heads.

Savage is now the medical director of King/Drew.

Two Doctors File 140 Grievances

During the turmoil and through 1998, Ordog and Wasserberger allege in their suits, they were hit with false allegations of academic fraud, given poor evaluations and passed over for promotions. Ordog had applied to become chairman of the department and Hutson, who eventually was promoted over him, had once been Ordog’s student, according to court records.

Many of the 140 grievances filed by the doctors were not replied to, and county lawyers wrote in a memo that that fact could lead a jury to conclude the doctors were retaliated against for complaining of racial harassment.

Wasserberger, who will retire from King/Drew in March, would receive $220,000 under the proposed settlement. Ordog, who is in private practice, his attorney said, would receive $320,000. According to county documents, the county already has spent more than $260,000 in legal fees on those two cases.

While awaiting his jury trial, Balasubramaniam remains at the medical center and said in an interview that he was glad the appeals court had upheld his Civil Service ruling. “I was discriminated against and denied the position. I think I should be made whole,” he said.