In June 2020, the LA County Department of Public Health was forced to remove supervision duties that had been imposed on a physician in violation of County rules. When hired in 2018, the physician was assigned to supervise psychologists, nurses and social workers, including doing performance evaluations. LA County Physician Specialist class specifications do not include supervision duties, which is reserved for the higher paid Senior Physician item.
This physician contacted UAPD because one of his supervisees, a problem employee he had been forced to hold accountable for poor performance, had filed a retaliatory complaint. He was asking UAPD to represent him in the investigation of the complaint. The UAPD representative pointed out that he was working out of class and should either get paid for these additional duties, get promoted, or have the duties removed. The representative worked with the physician to raise this with management and ultimately succeeded in getting management to agree to remove the duties and assign them to the Senior Physician in charge of the unit. Not only was the physician now free of the unpaid burden and liabilities associated with supervision, but he was also freed up to perform the public health work he had joined the County to do.