A new independent board should be set up immediately to oversee L.A. County’s beleaguered King/Drew Medical Center, according to a blistering report issued on Monday.

The Navigant Consulting Group, which was brought on in October to manage day-to-day operations of the hospital, issued a sharply critical report of the conditions and management at King/Drew. A summary released to the public cited “potentially serious environmental safety issues” in patient rooms and surgery suites, as well as serious lack of attention to regulatory compliance.

Above all, the report found that King/Drew “has a culture of excuses and blaming” and that “oversight is fractured and inconsistently exercised.”

Navigant recommended a series of sweeping changes, most notably the establishment of a “separate, independent, knowledgeable board” to govern the hospital.

“This report shows that the culture of the organization has to be changed from top to bottom,” said L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “The leadership, the standards and the accountability of every department of the organization must be changed.”

L.A. County Supervisor Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, whose district includes the hospital, said she supports setting up a separate board.

“We have previously talked about something similar to an independent governing board, to act as go-between for Navigant and the Board of Supervisors, so this would be an appropriate step,” she said.

Navigant also recommended setting up an independent community advisory board and reducing the scope of authority of the chief medical officer, the director of nursing and the administrative/regulatory director.

In addition, Navigant recommended closing down or downgrading the hospital’s perinatal intensive care unit and downgrading the neonatal intensive care unit, moves that are likely to spark community opposition. (The perinatal unit cares for babies who are up to several weeks old while neonatal refers to newborns.)

The King/Drew Medical Center, which was set up in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots, has had a long history of problems, including numerous medical lapses, patient deaths and allegations of mismanagement that have prompted the federal government to threaten to cut off more than $200 million in funding this month.

In October, the County Board of Supervisors hired Navigant for a year-long, $13.3 million contract to take over day-to-day operations from the county health department. As part of the contract, Navigant was required to issue a comprehensive review of the hospital and recommend improvements.

Burke said she believed that with the threat of a funding cutoff, “there is the political will” now to implement the recommendations.

Yaroslavsky also signaled that the urgency of the situation calls for action (although he hadn’t read the full report Monday afternoon). “We need to take swift and decisive steps to turn that hospital around. I believe it can be done. We don’t have any choice,” he said.