Dr. fired for his "genitals of the day" discussions, still made bank on leave

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A premier L.A. County teaching hospital has fired one of its highest-ranking doctors following a two-year investigation that found he regularly gawked at the genitalia of anesthetized patients and never disclosed that he was being paid by a medical device company whose products he used on patients.

Staff members at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a public hospital run by the county, told investigators that Dr. Louis Kwong sometimes looked under the surgical covers of Black males who were under anesthesia and discussed the “genitals of the day,” according to his discharge notice, which was obtained by The Times.

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The discharge notice makes no mention of the gun that Kwong, a volunteer deputy sheriff, had allegedly carried in the operating room and other parts of the hospital, according to a lawsuit filed by colleagues in October. The notice does say that he violated county policy by bringing a personal knife into the operating room on at least one occasion.

“Your inappropriate, disparaging comments and actions were offensive, and created an uncomfortable, hostile, and demoralizing work environment for others,” Griselda Gutierrez, the hospital’s chief medical officer, wrote in the notice

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County policy requires departments in most cases to keep paying an employee who is on leave during an investigation. The slow pace allowed Kwong to receive more than a million dollars without working. In 2023 — a year in which Kwong didn’t work a single day — he was the eighth highest paid county employee, according to salary records posted this month.

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