A New Source of Hope at King/Drew

It’s not easy to find the clinic, tucked away in a separate building off the main lobby of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, through winding corridors and up the elevator one floor.

There lies the troubled hospital’s newest addition and perhaps its brightest hope: a long-awaited health center for women.

“We are the envy of our colleagues for the set-up we have,” said Kim Thomas, nurse manager of the recently opened Women’s Health Center of Excellence at King/Drew.

It is housed one floor above the hospital’s former trauma center, which was closed in March so King/Drew could devote more attention to correcting serious lapses in management and patient care.

Thomas manages a team of 20 nurses that tends to female patients from some of the poorest neighborhoods of South-Central Los Angeles, many with nowhere else to go for services.

At a hospital that has pared back services and lost hundreds of employees through terminations or resignations, this center, which opened June 20, marks a renewed effort to provide better patient care.

“This center has been in planning for many years,” said Dr. Rosetta Hassan, director of women’s health, department of obstetrics and gynecology. “The opening is coinciding when the hospital is at a point of redefinition. The center is a good opportunity to put the foot in the right direction and show that we can be leaders on women’s health in the country.”

On any given day, the center serves roughly 70 patients. Hassan wants to see that grow to about 120.

The center’s mission statement: “Caring for every need of every woman to provide health care to.”

But an assessment of the community’s needs paints a daunting picture. Its rate of genetic abnormality is 7% higher than in the rest of the state. About 25% of the patients who visit the hospital’s HIV clinic are women. The incidence of low birth weight, at more than 25%, is three times higher than the state’s, attributed mainly to widespread substance abuse, doctors said.

“There are very special needs in this area,” Hassan said. “You’re dealing with patients who are very poor, with dysfunctional lives.”

Operating 45 clinics, the center offers many obstetrical and gynecological services at one location, including pap smears, mammograms, mental health services, breast and cervical cancer treatment, sexually transmitted disease and HIV services, birth control and well-baby exams, substance abuse and domestic violence programs.

Wendy Givens, a social worker at the center who has worked at King/Drew for 14 years, said the most serious problem is an increase in adolescent pregnancies, especially among 12-year-olds. “They have no support system,” she said.

To help fill that void, the center offers free classes in English and Spanish on childbirth education, parenting, breastfeeding and adolescent support. A patients’ resource facility is equipped with computers and audio-visual tools to encourage health education. And there are plans for a new pharmacy.

Dr. Teiichiro Fukushima, the center’s supervising administrator, said women’s health services at the hospital were fragmented before the clinic opened. Patients had to go from one department to another to get care, quarters often were cramped and services were not dedicated solely to women.

“Our clinic space was completely overrun by the volume,” said Fukushima, who has been at King/Drew since the late 1970s. “Women would rather have their own health facilities. This is a place they can come to any time they want, and they can feel good about it.”

Patient Georgette Burns, 28, eight months pregnant, said she had previously used the hospital’s obstetrics and gynecology clinic. She switched to the new center and said there has been a noticeable improvement in care and attention. “It’s been excellent,” she said. “It has become much nicer.”

Built for $1.7 million in Los Angeles County funds, the center was proposed in 1999 and scheduled to open in 2002. Most of the construction money came from the same pool of bond funds used to build the hospital in 1974, according to county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who first proposed establishing the facility.

But the project was delayed several years, in part because of design changes and some objections from departments that wanted to use the space, Burke said. Then the hospital was hit last year with revelations of mismanagement.

“I asked every week, ‘When is it going to open?’ ” Burke said. “With all the other problems the hospital had, I wasn’t sure they would go forward with it.”

Even now that the center is open, Hassan acknowledges that things are not “100% there.” A chief concern is a staffing shortage, which has caused the scaling back of some community outreach efforts. Current operating costs were carved out of the Department of Health Services’ existing budget, Fukushima said.

Despite the hospital’s problems, the center’s opening last month has restored confidence in its team and in the belief that women in the community will use the facility.

“I know a new patient would hesitate, possibly,” Fukushima said. But “these are high-risk patients.... They trust us, and they keep returning to us.”

Tony Gray, King/Drew’s chief financial officer, said the center was not expected to generate additional revenue for the hospital because operating costs and patient volume were expected to remain roughly the same.

“Since this was a relocation of existing services, the annual operating costs are already funded,” Gray said.

Spread over 30,000 square feet and designed to convey “openness, tranquillity and a warm welcome,” the center is decked out in pinks and purples, decorated with vases of flowers and pictures of patients’ babies pasted on a board outlined with pink painted hearts on a wall adjoining the consultation rooms.

Maria Munoz, 30, who is being treated for breast cancer at the center, said it has made the clinic system more efficient. “Everything is more organized here, with faster service,” she said.

Munoz said she was especially grateful for the center’s help in getting her financial assistance.

“I found a lot of support,” she said. “When I was diagnosed with cancer, they helped me fill out my documents and enrolled me in a program of financial assistance.”

Givens said the community’s history of violence and chronic poverty must be taken into account when dealing with patients.

For this reason, she said, the center’s cheerful environment is designed to provide comfort as well as a sense of pride.

“If they go to a dark place, they will say, ‘This is how they see me’ ” she said. “But when they see [the center], they know ‘This is what I’m worth.’ ”