The Region : County Blacklists Hospital in Burbank

Los Angeles County health officials have ordered paramedics to stop taking patients to Burbank Community Hospital, which is under investigation for allegations of improper and inadequate medical care of indigents. Officials of the county Department of Health Services declined to specify the reasons behind the abrupt order. But a department spokesman said paramedics will not be allowed to take patients to the hospital until problems there are corrected. “We’re trying to make sure that everything is well for public safety,” said Richard Inch, chief of special projects for the department’s emergency medical services agency. Investigators have evaluated at least five cases in which indigent patients died at the hospital, were denied help or needed hospitalization soon after doctors there released them. The probe intensified late last month after Robert Parks, a transient who had been taken to the hospital after police found him covered with lice, was found collapsed on the ground outside the hospital a day after he was admitted. Parks was taken to County-USC Medical Center, where he was admitted in serious condition.