Supervisors approve new plan

After a three-hour public hearing Monday, Los Angeles County supervisors unanimously approved the health department’s plan to put a smaller King/Drew under the management of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and voted to name the restructured hospital Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, as many officials and residents had urged.

In contrast to the emotional hearings surrounding past cuts at King/Drew, this one was muted, with more than 100 community activists acknowledging the inevitability that Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center will be downsized, even as they raised questions about how the move will affect residents.

“I don’t want to roll the dice,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), a longtime supporter of the facility near Watts, told the Board of Supervisors today. “I want to keep this hospital open.”

Waters and others expressed concern that pediatrics, neonatal intensive care, high-risk obstetrics and emergency psychiatric services would be shifted elsewhere and that residents would have trouble getting transportation to other county hospitals for specialty care.

The so-called MetroCare plan -- designed to restore suspended federal funding -- would reduce services at King/Drew and transfer control of the facility to Harbor-UCLA near Torrance.

King/Drew failed a make-or-break federal inspection this year, putting $200 million in funding in jeopardy. Medicare officials announced last week that funding would be extended from the Nov. 30 deadline until March 31.

County health chief Dr. Bruce Chernof reiterated the changes planned for King/Drew, including reducing the hospital to 114 beds and reassigning every employee. Chernof warned of possible interruptions in care caused by staffers taking jobs elsewhere and the recent termination of the medical residency program at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, formerly affiliated with the hospital.

Supervisor Don Knabe described the plan as “a work in progress.”

Dozens of doctors, labor leaders, attorneys and healthcare advocates testified -- many wearing yellow “Save MLK Hospital” T-shirts -- at the state-mandated hearing. Although most voiced support for the management overhaul, many criticized healthcare cuts in an already high-risk, underinsured and largely minority community.

Closing the inpatient pediatric ward at King/Drew would be a “catastrophe,” said Dr. Jasmine Eugenio, an attending pediatric physician at King/Drew.

Although some speakers argued that healthcare is needed across South Los Angeles beyond King/Drew, Chernof emphasized the need to focus on passing federal muster. “This discussion today is about one and one thing only; it’s about keeping a hospital open on the grounds of” King/Drew.

Others complained that low-income residents who rely on public transportation would be discouraged from seeking care at hospitals outside of South Los Angeles, and that the plan offered short-term solutions to a long-standing healthcare crisis.

“Any plan entertaining taking people as far as Olive View Hospital [in Sylmar] is not a plan,” said Lark Galloway-Gilliam, executive director of Community Health Councils, who submitted a report to the board questioning the plan.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn told the board she planned to introduce a motion today to draft a comprehensive city-county transportation plan for King/Drew patients and their families.

*

susannah.rosenblatt@latimes.com