King-Harbor fails final check, will close soon

Source: LA Times

The ER is shut down, and the rest will follow within two weeks. Reactions range from grief to relief.

Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital shut down its emergency room Friday night and will close entirely within two weeks, a startlingly swift reaction to a federal decision to revoke $200 million in annual funding because of ongoing lapses in care.

Los Angeles County health services director Dr. Bruce Chernof announced the closure plan Friday afternoon, hours after the hospital learned that it had failed its final test, a top-to-bottom review by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The hospital, formerly known as King/Drew, has shown itself unable to meet minimum standards for patient care since January 2004, according to the regulators.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-king11aug11,0,3698687.story

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A picture on the front page of the newspaper (but not on the web site) shows workers taking down a sign. The sign reads: "King/Drew Medical Center 24 Hour Emergency Service".

instead of killing the patients? Why not make it right, not make it go away?

Four years' worth of patients going through and receiving substandard care, in many cases.

But that's not all. Four years back is 2003. I left Los Angeles in fall '99. And before I left there had already been a steady string of articles about MLK/Drew's problems, their deficiencies, the various attempts to solve the problems from maybe 1995 to 1999. This is back when it was a teaching hospital. So when the LA Times article says "four years", they mean "four years of the *latest* series of attempts to solve the problems."

A decade of substandard care is more than enough, and it's been going on for over a decade. Numerous administrators tried. The city and the state tried. UCLA, no slouch at things medical, tried. Time to put the thing out of its misery, and maybe try again, building from the ground up.

in the literal sense, but I assume you meant that figuratively. The people who provided the substandard care will soon be gone. The buildings are probably okay. A hospital in that vicinity is certainly needed. If competent new employees are hired, and if UCLA can be persuaded to run the place, it will become an excellent hospital.

that if, in four years, you cannot find competent personnel to run something maybe they're hiring the WRONG DAMN PEOPLE?

who should have been fired, weren't. But that's a quibble. Not firing is very much like hiring. Basically I agree with you.

Keep the building, but put padlocks on it for a year, hire a contractor on a 13 month contract to keep everything and everybody out.

Then, 12 months later, go back and say you're going to start over. Have a set of people hire the top tier administrators; draw one hirer from one hospital each in San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Houston, and Miami. They are not to know the names or anything except the professional qualifications of the people applying for the top positions in the newly established hospital. This means that nobody that worked there before can be rehired unless they've been vetted by a complete stranger. Nobody has any seniority--start the union chapters over again so that the union isn't even able to think about the possibility of defending somebody that's been there 20 years.

Start over. Not with a new building. But with an entirely new set of people and policies. And make sure that community leaders have no say over squat, politicians have no say over what's up, and that the wages are high enough to attract competent people. They need a hospital, not a symbol, not something to show that the community is vibrant or cohesive.

that wouldn't treat the little girl who had a high fever because Kaiser Permanente wouldn't pay for her treatment. I wonder how the doctors & nurses at that hospital could live with themselves after allowing patients to die in the ER on a regular basis.

dg

But now the money no longer flows. Here is some background:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={73278441-DAC6-4CCB-A76E-AB4CCE246A61}

Admittedly, this could be "tin-foil hat" speak... but this could arguably be intentional. King-Drew/Harbor services South Central L.A. - I think they may be pulling a Katrina move, only this time rather than drowning in the flooded waters they drown in their own blood. Given, this hospital has had a long history of these issues. I understand wringing your hands of poor personnel and even poorer administrations; but an entire community (and the community does bare its share of the responsibility) is left to fend for itself because of this. And contrary to popular belief, everyone in South Central Los Angeles IS NOT a gangbanger.

I thought the short-term plan was for nearby hospitals to take on the patients who would otherwise have gone to King/Drew.

...that's the problem with this closing.

...no "nearby Los Angeles or L.A. County PUBLIC hospitals" in South Central Los Angeles or L.A. County that would take the un-insured walking wounded from South Central!

How many of the un-insured walking wounded from South Central you figure the small non-profit St. Francis in the city of Lynwood is going to take before they start telling them to go to other parts of L.A.?

Have you ever Googled Hospitals in Los Angeles? Here: <http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&q=Hospitals+Los+Angeles&ie=UTF8&ll=34.037867,-118.265076&spn=0.384074,0.6427&z=11&om=1>

Yesterday they were busy, but not alarmingly so.

closing down a hospital in SCLA seems like just another slap in the face to an area already beset with problems. Hit 'em when they're down. Is it possible that U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in their top-to-bottom review, were already predisposed to close the facility for very secretive psyops reasons. Make life as miserable as possible and fill up the jails with the tragic results. Just sayin'.

The CIA and the military may conduct psyops, but the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services do not. Why look for a conspiracy in a situation that is easily explained by greed and incompetence?

Our family lived there for about four years and I still have jaw problems from having to put it back over and over after interacting with the health "system".

Source: Washington Post

South L.A. Hospital Is Losing U.S. Funds
Facility Built After '65 Riots May Close

By Sonya Geis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 11, 2007; Page A03

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 10 -- An iconic local hospital built after the 1965 Watts riots to serve an area made up mostly of African Americans will lose its federal funding next week, officials announced Friday, pushing Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital one step closer to closing for good.

The hospital will lose $200 million in federal funds, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced, saying that conditions there "placed the health and safety of patients at great risk." The move was widely expected since King-Harbor failed its last federal inspection.

Nevertheless, the news came as a blow to activists who have fought for years to keep the hospital open.

The loss of King-Harbor would leave many low-income neighborhoods in South Los Angeles without any nearby hospital -- just as it was before the hospital opened in 1972. That will mean longer trips by ambulance for the tens of thousands of people treated in emergency rooms.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081001919.html?nav=rss_nation

Maybe this will teach a lesson about the consequences of choosing to be both black and poor.

And reopen next year. So there are solutions for this hospital that can make it profitable, but not beneficial to the community as a whole. I get it.

affiliated with a top-notch medical school, like USC or UCLA. This would benefit the community and also provide the best kind of training for young doctors.

The studies that show what needs fixing for profitability, show what needs fixing to meet accrediting standards. Just fix it and quit pretending they don't know what to do.