Officials Focus on Two Options for King/Drew

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors emerged from a second day of closed-door talks Tuesday with no concrete plans for Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, slated to lose its federal funding by the end of the year because of continued lapses in patient care.

County health officials said late in the day, however, that they had narrowed their focus to two options for the facility.

Transferring operation of the hospital to private hands or to another county medical center are the leading possibilities, according to a Department of Health Services statement. Any alternative would require King/Drew “to be radically restructured,” the statement read.

“The department is committed to finding a model that keeps critical inpatient services on the site,” said county health director Dr. Bruce Chernof in the statement, adding that any new arrangement must meet Medicare requirements and will be open to public comment.

At least one supervisor, Mike Antonovich, favors shifting control of the embattled hospital to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance and downsizing King/Drew, said spokesman Tony Bell.

Supervisor Gloria Molina said that such a move was one possibility but “we don’t know exactly what the model is going to be,” she said, adding that an appeal of the federal regulators’ decision is unlikely.

Molina said she envisions a “new team of people from top to bottom” staffing King/Drew in the future.

The three other supervisors have not said what approach they would favor.

“We will certainly do everything we can to maintain the highest quality of health service for the people of the community,” said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, whose district includes King/Drew.

Chernof is slated to return to the board with a report on alternatives next week, probably in an open meeting, Molina said.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services informed King/Drew and county officials Friday that the hospital had failed a “make or break” inspection conducted this summer, falling short of minimum standards in nine of 23 areas. As a result, the medical center will lose $200 million a year in federal funding, nearly half of its budget.

King/Drew has been out of compliance with federal rules since January 2004 for lapses in medical care that have repeatedly harmed and killed patients.

In another development Tuesday, the national group that accredits physician training programs said it had asked the medical school affiliated with King/Drew for detailed plans on how it would ensure adequate training for about 300 medical residents who receive specialty training at the hospital.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education said it had asked Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science for short-term and long-term plans for continuing its residents’ education, council spokeswoman Julie Jacob said. The group requires residents to receive their training at accredited hospitals in most cases.

In a statement, Drew University President Susan Kelly said the school is pursuing several options, including talking to other hospitals about taking Drew residents. Even so, she said, keeping King/Drew as a full-service teaching hospital is “essential to the people of this community.” The hospital has long served a largely impoverished, minority area with otherwise limited access to healthcare.

UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, which sends some of its medical students to King/Drew for clinical rotations, said this week that it would shift those students to other, UCLA-controlled hospitals.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) read a letter from the congresswoman, an ardent backer of King/Drew, to the board during Tuesday’s meeting. Waters labeled the hospital’s failure under federal scrutiny “unfathomable.”

“Time and time again, we have been led to believe that improvements were taking place” at the hospital, Waters wrote.

The letter described the health problems and lack of insurance among many residents across South Los Angeles and urged the board to “immediately develop a cogent plan” that would pass federal muster and keep King/Drew’s doors open.