Another Report Also Faults King Hospital for Its Deficiencies

A new, confidential report prepared by the state Department of Health Services details health-care deficiencies at Martin Luther King Jr./ Drew Medical Center, echoing last week’s scathing state report on the institution, which cited serious lapses in patient care, administration and quality assurance.

The new report--inadvertently made available to The Times--concludes that the hospital has flunked five major areas of inspection, threatening a shut-off of Medicare and Medi-Cal funding, the main source of revenue to the 430-bed, county-operated hospital in Watts.

100-Page Report

The 100-page report was forwarded to the federal Health Care Financing Administration last week for action, but it has not been publicly released. And the federal agency has not yet informed the hospital whether it will move to shut off the hospital’s funds or merely put the facility on probationary status, subject to continuous federal monitoring and review.

The report describes fundamental, systemic deficiencies at the hospital in more explicit and broader terms than the state report on the hospital issued last week, which detailed serious violations of the state’s health code. Those violations jeopardize the hospital’s state operating license.

The new report states flatly, for example, that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which oversees the administration of King, “is not effectively monitoring and conducting the affairs of the hospital,” nor is there any evidence to show that the supervisors hold doctors “accountable for the quality of care provided to patients.”

‘Quality Assurance’ Failed

Inspectors found so many problems that they failed the hospital’s “quality assurance” program, which is supposed to ensure review of most hospital deaths and questionable occurrences. And they also said the hospital’s nursing services, dietary care and infection control practices did not meet federal criteria.

They cited numerous instances in which patient care at the hospital had been “compromised” as a result of a critical breakdown in five fundamental areas.

Failure to pass inspection in one area alone can jeopardize a hospital’s federal and state funding available through the Medicare and Medi-Cal programs, federal officials said. King received about $59 million from these programs during the last fiscal year, according to county health official Carl Williams.

Some Progress Made

Officials at King had no comment on the new report, but Williams said that many of the deficiencies cited have “been taken care of already.” He declined to give details.

Both federal and county health officials refused to make the new report available to The Times. But along with a cover letter declining to release the report this week, Williams sent The Times a copy of it.

“I don’t know how that happened,” he said later.

Williams is heading a county Department of Health Services investigation of all recent allegations of substandard patient care and deficient hospital practices at King. The investigation was ordered by the Board of Supervisors after a series of articles in The Times, which, according to the supervisors, pointed out problems of “poor administration, a lack of highly skilled medical staff and a severe shortage of space, staff and funding to adequately deal with the hospital’s increasing patient load.”

Infection Control

The new report, based on an inspection in June, again faults infection control at King. “Infection control at King was not being enforced for the prevention and control of infection and communicable diseases within the hospital,” the report states.

The report concluded that the nutritional needs of patients were neglected for days at a time. In one sample of 13 cases, deficiencies were found in all of them.

As for the nursing problems at King, the report said many deficiencies stemmed from a consistently inadequate level of staffing.