Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s orthopedics chief, placed on leave in 2022 during an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving unconscious patients and misogynistic behavior, is no longer working at the renowned Los Angeles County teaching hospital, the Southern California News Group has learned.
The county Department of Health Services confirmed in an email Thursday, March 21, that Dr. Louis Kwong’s employment has ended, but refused to disclose whether he resigned voluntarily or was fired, saying it was a personnel matter.
Harbor-UCLA’s chief medical officer, Griselda Gutierrez, met briefly on March 13 with about 20 Orthopedic Department surgeons, residents and secretaries to inform them of Kwong’s employment status, according to Dr. Jennifer Hsu, a surgeon who attended the meeting.
However, Gutierrez declined to provide additional information, said Hsu, who along with fellow orthopedic surgeon Dr. Haleh Badkoobehi and Dr. Madonna Fernandez-Frackelton, Harbor-UCLA’s former director of emergency medicine, are suing the county for ignoring their complaints about Kwong.
Surgeons pressed Gutierrez for a formal statement detailing the findings of the county’s investigation, Hsu said.
“Dr. Gutierrez then said that it was a broad investigation,” she said. “She said there were violations of the county policy of equity and that there were substantiated findings on several other policy-related matters.”
One surgeon at the meeting came to Kwong’s defense, asking what the Orthopedics Department chairman had done that violated policy because it never occurred to him that Kwong’s actions were punishable in “life or in a job,” according to multiple sources who asked not to be identified because they fear retaliation.
Carol Gillam, an attorney representing Hsu, Badkoobehi and Fernandez-Frackelton, described the surgeon’s comments as “ludicrous.”
“It’s a shame the county doesn’t want to be more transparent with the public about the results of their investigation,” Gillam said. “And it’s disappointing that some other surgeons cannot even seem to understand what was horrendous about Kwong’s behavior — this illustrates the impotence of the administration in curtailing Kwong’s actions and influence.”
Badkoobehi and Fernandez-Frackelton declined to comment on Gutierrez’s meeting with staff. Gutierrez and Kwong did not respond to requests for comment.
Harbor-UCLA, a 570-bed public teaching hospital and Level 1 trauma center in the unincorporated West Carson area, is owned by Los Angeles County and operated by DHS. Its doctors are on the faculty at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine and oversee medical residents trained at the facility.
HR investigation detailed
Confidential determination letters obtained by the Southern California News Group detailed the outcome of Los Angeles County human resources investigations into complaints against Kwong from several Harbor-UCLA employees.
The county substantiated an allegation of sexual harassment as well as gender discrimination and inappropriate conduct toward others. It also found that Harbor-UCLA supervisors and managers failed to perform their mandated duty to report violations of the county’s equity policy.
The letters, which don’t detail whether any discipline was handed down for the violations, offer the first public glimpse into the county’s investigation of Kwong that began in 2022 and has been kept under wraps despite several public records requests from SCNG for the findings.
“Producing these documents would be an invasion of privacy,” Mira Hashmall, an attorney representing the county, wrote in a March 1 letter to SCNG denying its request for records detailing investigation results and Kwong’s employment status.
Releasing documents before completing all investigations would “negatively impact the public interest in ethical and comprehensive investigations of government employees,” Hashmall said.
Lurid allegations
Two lawsuits targeting Kwong — one by Badkoobehi and Hsu and another by Fernandez-Frackelton — were filed in October 2023 in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The women, seeking more than $50,000 in damages, allege myriad employment violations, including retaliation, hostile work environment, harassment and gender and pregnancy discrimination.
Badkoobehi and Hsu allege Kwong committed sexual misconduct on unconscious patients in the Harbor-UCLA operating room in the presence of multiple witnesses.
He engaged in “finger-banging” of surgical hip wounds in front of Badkoobehi, while making sexual sounds and saying he was finding the “G-spot,” the lawsuit alleges.
Additionally, Badkoobehi alleges Kwong measured the penis size of some patients and undraped an anesthetized Black patient to look at his penis after being told it was large.
Management at Harbor-UCLA did not investigate the complaint about the anesthetized patient, which was first reported by a UCLA medical student in 2019, the suit states.
In another matter dubbed the “baseball incident,” Kwong ordered that a video monitor in the operating room used to measure patients’ vitals be switched off and be used to display a baseball game so that residents could watch during surgery.
After the baseball incident, Kwong allegedly stripped Badkoobehi of her position as associate program director of the Orthopedic Department, a post where she had reportedly excelled for four years.
The lawsuit also alleges Kwong told at least three other physicians that he wanted to get rid of Hsu while she was out on maternity leave by getting her to switch to part-time so he could release her, and force her to work at a less desirable Los Angeles County hospital.
Lawsuit allege complaints ignored
The lawsuits from the physicians also allege that Dr. Darrell W. Harrington, Harbor-UCLA’s former director of graduate medical education and chief institutional officer for nearly 20 years, ignored repeated complaints about Kwong and protected him.
Harrington did not respond to a request for comment.
Harrington, who remains as chief academic officer for the Department of Health Services, stepped down from his Harbor-UCLA posts in December 2023, citing “precipitant factors,” including health and legal issues.
His resignation came months after the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, the national accreditation agency for all physician residency and graduate education internship programs, placed Harbor-UCLA on probation for “substantial” noncompliance.
Harbor-UCLA remains fully accredited for existing residency and fellowship programs, but cannot apply for ACGME accreditation of new programs while on probation.
Fernandez-Frackelton submitted a 10-page complaint to the ACGME in March 2022, contending Harrington prevented her from removing trainees — interns, residents and fellows — from the hostile work environment created by Kwong.
The complaint, obtained by SCNG, also alleged Harrington “has protected and defended” Kwong for many years despite “complaints about sexism, racism, hostile work environment, bullying, illegal narcotic prescriptions, unethical surgical consents of patients, and retaliation.”
Four emergency medicine chief residents filed a separate complaint with the ACGME in March 2022, further detailing the difficulties interns have experienced in orthopedics rotations.
“The leadership in our department has attempted to work closely with both Orthopedic Surgery Department leadership and hospital leadership to improve the culture and the educational value of this rotation,” the complaint states. “However, despite the numerous meetings that have occurred across numerous calendar years, no meaningful improvement has occurred.”
Members of the orthopedics faculty and others also complained that Kwong, while serving as a reserve Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, carried a concealed knife and wore a gun at various times at Harbor-UCLA, including in the operating room, clinic, office and conference rooms, and at times when scrubbed in for surgery.
Staff at all medical centers are prohibited from carrying weapons or having weapons on medical campuses, according to the DHS. The only exceptions are for physicians who are reserve deputies and are fully trained to perform law enforcement functions when called on assignment to provide life-saving support.
However, even then, reserve deputy physicians at Harbor-UCLA must follow strict safety protocols, including properly storing their handguns in a locked safe box while at the hospital. They are not allowed to carry a firearm during surgery.
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