Fifteen months ago, Dr. Bruce Chernof was brought in to preside over the shutdown of the hospital which had struggled for decades with patient-care problems.

The public hospital, now known as Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, failed a critical federal inspection and was notified last week that it had lost $200 million in federal funding. Its emergency room was closed within hours.

Its 48 remaining inpatient beds are being emptied, and an estimated 48,000 patients — the number who passed through King-Harbor’s emergency room in the last year — now have to turn elsewhere for care.

Chernof, as head of Los Angeles County’s Department of Health Services, remains in the hot seat, facing questions about where King-Harbor patients will go, how medical staff will be shuffled and whether a private operator will take over the facility in Willowbrook, south of Watts. Finding answers won’t be easy.

Those who know the 45-year-old Chernof say they expect him to retain his signature calm focus as the county faces a healthcare catastrophe likely to ignite fresh recriminations.

After Chernof was selected to replace Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, the probably incompetent orignial Administrator, he brought sweeping change to the troubled hospital: He eliminated specialty services, reduced inpatient beds and placed the facility under the management of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance.

He also pledged to clean house among the King-Harbor staff, re-interviewing every employee who would be under Harbor-UCLA’s oversight.

He received mostly high marks from LA County supervisors as well as from one key critic of the county: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). A staunch supporter of the hospital, Waters particularly disliked Garthwaite, who had tried to tighten hospital operations by advocating closure of the facility’s trauma center. It shut down in 2005.