- The middle-aged doctor has been the highest-paid employee in LA for years
- Colleagues say he practically lives in the public rehab facility where he works
The highest paid official in Los Angeles County has been revealed as a top anesthesiologist with a shockingly full work schedule.
Dr. Sebo Amirkhanian Namagerdy spends 94 hours a week working his two jobs at a rehabilitation center in Downey and at UCI-Health Fountain Valley in Orange County.
The combined incomes yielded a salary of $1.26 million last year, according to now public data reviewed by the LA times.
Namagerdy has been the highest-paid official in LA County for half a decade.
In 2023, he was making about triple what his boss was making at the rehab facility, and twice the salary of the head of the county health department.
The anesthesiologist graduated from Iran’s University of Medical Sciences almost a quarter of a century ago and now appears to own a family home in Glendale.
Dr. Sebo Amirkhanian Namagerdy spends most of his time at his two jobs: the first, a rehabilitation center in Downey, California (photo)
His second gig is at UCI-Health Fountain Valley in Orange County, where he works part-time as a critical care physician
In recent years he has received compensation for working between 94 and 101 hours per week.
A spokesperson for UCI-Health told the Times that Namagerdy averaged six 12-hour shifts a month last fall at the facility where he works part-time as an intensive care physician.
An anonymous doctor from the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center said that Namagerdy’s luxury vehicle is almost always in the complex’s parking lot, and some have seen him come out in the morning with a toothbrush and a towel around his neck, which indicates some level of concern. permanent residence at his workplace.
The LA County Health Department noted that it is not necessarily atypical for doctors in Namagerdy’s field to work 90 hours per week, and that this figure takes into account the time spent resting between seeing patients.
“There were no patient safety concerns in the case of this physician,” the department said of Namagerdy.
However, the province also confirmed that Namagerdy’s overtime as an assistant physician – the reason he is able to increase his salary so significantly year after year – is now “under review.”
The doctor’s colleagues, most of whom have access to viewing his salary online, know Namagery – who Dr. Sebo is called – as a committed worker with limited patience for people and issues that he believes do not deserve his attention.
According to his colleagues, Namagerdy’s intensive, some might say insane, agenda is the result of a severe shortage of doctors at the provincial level.
A doctor at Rancho told the Times, “They (the hospital system) can’t recruit people — and they found someone who is willing to basically live at the hospital.”
In recent years he has been compensated for working between 94 and 101 hours per week; in previous years this was an even higher number
An anonymous doctor from the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center said Namagerdy’s luxury vehicle is almost always in the facility’s parking lot, and some have seen him show up in the morning with a toothbrush and a towel around his neck.
While the anonymous doctor said Namagerdy’s hours are not a “sustainable long-term solution” to the province’s shortage, the salaries offered are not competitive enough to attract top talent, if at all.
The Union of American Physicians and Dentists believes that county hospitals, which thousands of poor and uninsured people rely on for medical care, are persistently understaffed due to mismanagement and unattractive benefit packages for medical workers.
The ongoing problem has led hospital administrators to rely far too heavily on a small number of staffers who work obscene hours every week.
