Hospital Urged to Carry On

The top official at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center circulated a letter to staffers Wednesday urging them to continue coming to work and redouble their efforts to provide high-quality patient care even as the embattled hospital faces the loss of federal funding.

The letter from Chief Executive Antionette Smith-Epps acknowledged that the hospital’s services would have to be restructured and that staff would be significantly affected.

In the meantime, however, “we are counting on you to be here to meet the needs of our patients,” she wrote. “I urge you to remain focused on doing the best job that I know you can.”

She warned employees against speculating what direction the county Board of Supervisors might take. The board is considering two principal options: handing the hospital off to a private provider or turning it over to another county hospital to manage. County-run Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance is one possibility.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services informed King/Drew and county officials Friday that it would cut off about $200 million in annual funding at year’s end after the hospital failed an inspection this summer.

The Hospital Assn. of Southern California announced its support Wednesday for county health officials’ focus on privatizing the hospital or putting it under the management of another county medical center. The trade group represents most private and public hospitals across the region.

Also, Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn, whose district includes Watts, the neighborhood directly north of the hospital’s unincorporated community of Willowbrook, sent a letter to City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo asking him to analyze the city’s legal options to keep the hospital running.

Healthcare and community activists, citing potentially dangerous reductions in medical services, are expected to call today on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a state of emergency for the South Los Angeles area.

The hospital serves a largely impoverished minority population that often lacks other options for healthcare.

susannah.rosenblatt

@latimes.com