Panel Delays Vote on King Hospital Accreditation : Health care: A serious blow to the beleaguered facility is averted temporarily. Federal officials had earlier said the hospital has made a dramatic turnaround in its effort to improve patient care.

A potentially serious blow to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center was temporarily averted Friday when the agency that certifies most of the nation’s hospitals postponed a vote on a recommendation to withdraw the facility’s accreditation because of serious health care violations.

The Chicago-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations said it would delay any action until it had a chance to officially notify King hospital officials of its staff’s recommendation. When the commission meets again next month, it can vote to either approve or reject the recommendation or place King on probationary status. County hospital officials can appeal any decision.

The threatened withdrawal of accreditation comes about a month after the troubled Watts hospital had $60 million in Medicare and Medicaid funds rescued, when federal health officials said King had made a dramatic turnaround after its six-month battle to improve patient care.

A loss of accreditation would have some effect on privately insured patients at King but would not affect Medi-Cal coverage, federal funding or its state operating license, according to state Health Department officials. Its immediate impact would probably be felt among residency programs, where doctors are trained at the hospital.

The potential damage to the facility, a key Los Angeles County teaching-hospital, was enough to persuade Robert C. Gates, county health chief, to make a personal appearance at the meeting in Chicago. Gates flew to Chicago late Thursday with Carl Williams, director of county hospitals, to plead with commission members not to yank King’s credential while the hospital continues to correct a long list of deficiencies cited earlier by state and federal health investigators.

Members of the secretive and powerful health care commission, which sets the accreditation standards for more than 80% of the nation’s medical facilities, denied Gates’ request to appear before the panel. Commission meetings are private, and it has been strongly criticized in recent years for keeping hospital deficiencies confidential. The agency will not publicly release or discuss any of its hospital inspection reports.

Gates, reached by phone in Denver on Friday, said he believed that his presence may have helped in postponing the vote.

It is highly unusual for the commission to threaten to pull any hospital’s accreditation. Two years ago, the agency denied accreditation to five medical facilities out of more than 3,500 it surveyed. Several health care experts suggested that the commission might now be trying to present a tougher image.

Gates said he was stunned when he was told of the joint commission staff’s recommendation this week, since state and federal health officials had given King a passing grade after an inspection of the 430-bed facility in November.

Joint commission officials said that the agency is handcuffed by rules that only allow the panel to act on the findings of its medical inspection team and not on any subsequent corrections. A team of commission medical investigators visited King in early October, nearly seven weeks before a state Health Department inspection determined that the hospital had shown marked improvement in patient care.

“Obviously, it’s a very serious thing and we want to do everything we can to avoid a loss of accreditation,” Gates said. “I think it’s a very unreasonable situation if they (commission members) don’t accept all the progress that’s been made.”

When the commission team finished its inspection in October, “they did not indicate that King was in any particular jeopardy. And our pitch is that they should be able to see all the information showing that the problems have been rectified,” he said.

If King lost its accreditation, it could seriously harm more than a dozen residency programs at the teaching hospital, and King would become the largest medical facility in the state to lose its good standing. State health officials said about 50 of California’s 700 licensed hospitals--mostly small, rural facilities--are operating without accreditation.

The commission’s withdrawal of King’s credentials could also result in the loss of accreditation for its residency programs, according to the agency that monitors the nation’s medical teaching programs. Officials from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education said they would review all of the hospital’s residency programs if the joint commission were to withdraw King’s accreditation.

“It could be a very serious loss,” said Dr. John Gienapp, an official with the accreditation council. “We do not think residents should be trained at places where quality of care is judged to be inadequate. And I certainly doubt that new residents would want to go” into unaccredited programs.

Edward Renford, King’s acting administrator, could not be reached for comment Friday.

The commission investigation was spurred by a series of articles in The Times last year detailing numerous problems in patient care and administration at the hospital and by a state Health Department report in which King was cited for massive health code violations.

Although a final state review of King found numerous deficiencies in the hospital plant, inadequate nurse staffing and other problems last month, federal health officials lauded King for launching a “herculean effort” to bring the facility into compliance in most areas. County officials hired nearly 200 additional employees and closed four hospital wards at King to pass the inspection.