Quality of Care at King Hospital

Inevitably, your series of articles portraying the quality of medical care and education at Los Angeles County’s Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center will be attacked as spiteful, anecdotal, one-sided and biased (Part I, Sept. 3-5). Some will say that this is a dubiously motivated (and possibly even racist) attack against a heroic institution and its employees who are struggling against overwhelming odds to provide desperately needed medical care to an under-served community. There is no doubt that motivated, and hard-working staff outnumber those with less integrity at King.

In my opinion, though, The Times is to be commended for a courageous and all too accurate portrayal of an institution burdened by administrative malaise, supervisorial apathy, chronic lack of funding, obsolete and broken down equipment, understaffing, overcrowding and possible fraud and embezzlement. I can personally affirm each of your findings. In 1986, I was an attending physician in the Department of Medicine and taught medical interns and residents on the wards at King. I have also had several relatives admitted to King.

King is known in the surrounding community as “Killer King”; thanks to your series, we don’t have to ask why. As you point out, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has been aware of King’s shortcomings. Each of these findings has been documented for them at one time or another in recent years. It is, therefore, our Board of Supervisors who should be indicted for perpetrating this travesty of an institution upon its patients, its employees, and the community.

King is the best example of what the separate but unequal type of medical care supplied to the poor, black, Hispanic and uninsured members of our society really means. If King were located in a more affluent area, it would not only not be tolerated, it would be closed down! So why do we put up with this institution? We tolerate it because it is the only game in that part of town. If King were closed, there would be no alternative for many residents of South-Central Los Angeles.

The county is required by law to provide the same quality of medical care in its public institutions “as that available to non-indigent people receiving health care services in private facilities.” Clearly, this is not the case. I’ve worked at a number of private hospitals in L.A. County and not one has problems even remotely similar to King’s. Unfortunately, King’s constituency is perceived by many area politicians to be powerless. Until this attitude changes, little will ever really be done to correct the hospital’s problems. Residents of South-Central L.A. County need a real hospital. It is time that someone forced the county supervisors to realize that they are playing the health care game for keeps.

DAVID M. CARLISLE, M.D.

Los Angeles