Hospital Boss in Burbank Adopts New, Softer Stance

Jurral Rhee couldn’t stop apologizing.

It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and Rhee, administrator of Burbank Community Hospital, was running behind schedule. He kept saying he was sorry when an interview scheduled to discuss his recent difficulties was postponed for several hours.

When he finally sat down late in the day in his converted bungalow office near the hospital, Rhee, 63, appeared far different from the outspoken administrator who had locked horns with county health officials over what they called his inadequate management of Burbank Community.

Rhee even smiled when asked if he felt he was difficult or combative.

“A lot of things that have come out might make me seem that way, but it’s not true,” Rhee said. “I know what kind of person I am, and the people who know me told me how sorry they were that I was skewered in the press. They care for me, and know what a good person I am.”

A Different View

Some Los Angeles County health officials seem to have held a different view of Rhee in the last few months.

They questioned his commitment to improving the hospital after he was slow to respond to an investigation last September that identified problems in administration, staff procedures, emergency treatment and health-care monitoring.

Among other things, county health investigators said, the hospital “failed to assure that properly trained and qualified personnel were assigned to the emergency department.” The investigators also said in a report that hospital staff allowed some physicians to administer emergency care without proper authorization, and that Rhee and the hospital’s board of trustees were ineffective administrators.

Ralph Lopez, director of the health facilities division of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said Rhee apparently did not take the findings seriously.

The controversy has calmed somewhat in recent weeks, and officials say they are happy with Rhee’s latest efforts to correct the problems. But, Rhee said, the criticism and the publicity of the last few months still sting. He called it an unfair attack on a man who has been a hospital administrator since 1955 and in public health since 1949.

“It’s hard to put that hurt behind you,” Rhee said quietly, looking at the floor of his small, spare office.

The county investigation was prompted by inquiries into whether the hospital was administering proper emergency care to indigents. One transient who had collapsed outside the hospital the day after he was treated there for lice was denied further care. And, police said, a homeless woman who was treated after a severe beating still had blood dripping from her face and her bandages when she was discharged.

A Vendetta

At the time, Rhee denounced the report, calling it the “kind of thing” that was “castrating this hospital and the 350 employees who make their livelihood here.” Denying that he or staff members were guilty of wrongdoing, Rhee called county health officials “overzealous,” and accused them of carrying out a vendetta against him.

He became especially incensed by criticism that he had not taken steps to correct the problems.

Lopez announced in early October that he might recommend closing the hospital if Rhee missed the deadline for filing a plan to correct the deficiencies.

“We never received a cover letter telling us of any deadline,” Rhee said when he learned of Lopez’s threat. “They should have sent a letter. . . . They screwed up.”

During this period, county health officials ordered paramedics not to take patients to Burbank Community. The Burbank city attorney’s office said it was considering filing criminal charges against the hospital for its reported refusal to treat the injured transient who collapsed outside the hospital.

Federal health officials told Burbank Community that the hospital’s status as a Medicare provider was in jeopardy. And a preliminary plan to correct the deficiencies was rejected by county officials as inadequate.

As the pressure intensified, Rhee’s seemingly defiant attitude became more conciliatory. He referred to the hospital staff as a “family” who would get through the crisis together.

Last month, Rhee met with Lopez and apologized, adding that he had every intention of cooperating with the county health agency.

“I wanted to stop the fermenting of a problem that wasn’t there,” he explained. “I never criticized what they did. We were treated appropriately. I wanted to show there was no malice on my part.”

Last week, Rhee said his earlier comments had been blown out of proportion and did not reflect the way he felt about the investigation.

“They had the right to do what they did,” he said.

One of the investigation’s main criticisms focused on Burbank Community’s treatment of Robert Parks, the transient who was found outside the hospital in late August the day after he had been treated there for lice. Despite pleas from Burbank police officers, physicians refused to admit Parks again, saying he had already been properly treated.

Parks then was taken by police to County-USC Medical Center, where doctors said he was suffering from malnutrition, anemia, dehydration and alcoholic withdrawal. They pronounced his condition critical.

“By what stretch of the imagination is it our responsibility to hospitalize someone like that?” Rhee said at the time of Parks’ hospitalization at County-USC. “If you go along Skid Row, and you pick up 10 transients or winos, how many of them do you think would be suffering from delirium or malnutrition or anemia?”

Rhee says he never intended those statements to be inflammatory.

Almost three weeks ago, Burbank Community submitted a revised plan for correcting health-care and staffing deficiencies at the hospital. The plan included arranging transportation and shelter for indigent patients after they are discharged.

The plan also would establish a monitoring program by department heads, administrators and the board of trustees to prevent further problems with medical care and staffing.

The hospital is now implementing the plan.

Rhee has admitted that the hospital had been “lackadaisical” in some areas of bookkeeping and administration and said he now believes the county’s criticisms “will make us a better institution.”

Although the hospital’s Medicare status is still being evaluated, paramedics have resumed taking patients to Burbank Community, and the Burbank city attorney’s office has declined to file criminal charges.

Rhee has been in charge of Burbank Community, a licensed Medicare hospital with a 24-hour emergency room, for more than four years. Before that, he was administrator of Lakeview Medical Center, now defunct, for five years.

Some of Rhee’s fellow hospital administrators said they can sympathize with his initial reaction to the county investigation.

“He was really faced with a difficult problem, and he probably did react defensively at first,” said M. Marc Goldberg, chief executive officer of Sherman Oaks Community Hospital. “I know I would.”

Goldberg said he heard Rhee last month report on the hospital’s difficulties to the Hospital Council of Southern California, a group of hospital officials.

“He was extremely concerned, and I think he was upset with the confusion that existed,” Goldberg said.

James Sauer, administrator at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, said, “Mr. Rhee is extremely conscientious, and a highly committed health manager working in difficult circumstances.” Sauer said he has known Rhee 10 years.

Rhee, meanwhile, still contends that Parks and other transients were well-treated at the hospital.

“I’m on the task force for the care of the homeless for the United Way,” Rhee said. “So what does that mean? Is what I’m doing a big hypocrisy or something?

“If you knew I grew up there, you know I wouldn’t kick anyone in the face like that,” added Rhee, who said he was raised “in the ghettos of Los Angeles” near Sunset Boulevard and Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles. “It’s just not possible.”