Weird Hospital

Southern California, breeding ground of cults and quacks, of nudists, sun-worshipers, gland doctors and colonic irrigators, is also the home of some 7,000 harassed, exasperated physicians, and the second largest general hospital in the U. S.: 23-story Los Angeles County. Built in 1933, the gleaming white skyscraper houses 3,154 beds, serves 50,000 patients a year.

To doctors outside California, Los Angeles County General Hospital is a weird and wonderful place. Although it was built for charity patients, it charges them, under State law, an average maintenance rate of $4.78 a day, almost $1.50 higher than average rates in private hospital wards. Although it was built by doctors, it welcomes, under State law, a flock of osteopaths. Doctors and osteopaths work in separate wings, seldom speak to each other. For nearly six months it has had no director, and many of its prominent staff members have marched out in a huff.

The hospital's first superintendent, able, efficient Dr. Neal Naramore Wood, was edged out by Mayor Frank Lawrence Shaw, who was himself ignominiously recalled from public office (TIME, Sept. 26, 1938). After Dr. Wood came two laymen. One left his job, the other lost it.

Last September the County Board of Supervisors began sending out confidential letters to prominent hospital directors from Maine to California asking them if they would like to run the world's largest hospital for $9,000 a year. All said no. By February only six men had asked for the job, most of them unknown to the medical world. One was none other than Dr. Neal Naramore Wood. Thoroughly befuddled, the board turned for advice to Dr. Malcolm Thomas MacEachern, associate director of the American College of Surgeons, organization which certifies hospitals. Dr. MacEachern was polite to the supervisors, but said in effect that they had better retire gracefully to the background, leave the management of the hospital to a respectable board of "outstanding citizens with non-political affiliations." He further advised: "A minimum of $12,000 salary should be offered to the new incumbent, rather than $9,000." (When looking for a director last year, Chicago's Cook County Hospital offered $18,000.)

Such common sense was lost on the befuddled supervisors. One of them insisted $6,000 was enough. Another suggested raising the ante to $10,000 and moving expenses. So last week, still sticking to $9,000, they finally decided to have civil-service examination for the six candidates. Best guess was that Dr. Wood would star in the exam. Whether he would be appointed no one could say. Certain it was that Los Angeles doctors, fed up with political fights, were ready to blow the lid off County Hospital.

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