Hospital Seeks Donations to Help Pay Riot Victims’ Bills : Inglewood: Daniel Freeman treated hundreds of patients injured by civil violence, about 75% of whom lacked insurance. The facility expects to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When street violence erupted Wednesday evening, the emergency department at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital quickly began to fill up--with victims old and young, male and female, primarily black and Latino.

They had been shot, stabbed, beaten, cut with shards of glass.

And about 75% had no private health insurance to cover their bills, say officials at the Catholic hospital in Inglewood.

“We call it the mission of the hospital” to treat everyone regardless of ability to pay, said Mary Schnack, the hospital’s public relations and marketing director.

To help pay the costs of treating patients without insurance, the not-for-profit Daniel Freeman Hospitals Foundation is accepting donations for a Patient Assistance Fund.

“We’re getting lots of phone calls,” said foundation Vice President Mary Anne Bendixen. “We’ve been doing this only for 48 hours, but we have people who want to assist.”

The 365-bed hospital on North Prairie Avenue, operated by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, became a mecca for the wounded victims of civil strife. By midafternoon Friday, their numbers had soared to about 140; most were treated at the emergency department and released.

One reason that so many riot victims were taken to the facility is because Daniel Freeman serves as a paramedic base station and receives paramedic ambulances, officials said.

Among those admitted was Reginald O. Denny, 36, the gravel-truck driver who received national attention when he was pulled from his truck and beaten Wednesday in South Los Angeles.

But there were others, many others.

Staff members described a 13-year-old boy with a hip injury whose mother strapped him to an ironing board so that friends could transport him to the emergency room. They talked of a young girl with gunshot wounds in both ankles, and of “gunshot wound after gunshot wound,” as emergency-services director Kim Colonnelli described it.

“I had five nurses that were here for 24 hours,” she said.

The hospital expects to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars because of the crisis, said Peter Bastone, administrator and executive vice president. Expenses include overtime and additional staffing costs as well as revenue lost because much elective surgery and other nonessential medical services were canceled, officials said.

Funds sent to the Patient Assistance Fund will be earmarked for the violence victims, said Bendixen. The foundation has separate funds for specific patients and for general hospital use.

Donations for the fund can be sent to: Daniel Freeman Hospital Foundation, Attn.: Patient Assistance Fund, 333 N. Prairie Ave., Inglewood 90301.