Ban on Cuts to Continue at King/Drew

A Superior Court judge said Tuesday that she would extend an order that prohibits Los Angeles County from cutting patient services at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and six comprehensive health centers.

Judge Dzintra Janavs agreed with the labor union representing King/Drew doctors that the county must give the public a chance to respond before reducing patients’ access to care.

But her ruling doesn’t reverse the county’s elimination of 432 positions at the hospital in Willowbrook on July 1, which caused many employees to be transferred elsewhere in the health system. The decision leaves the dispute simmering between the county and King/Drew doctors, who contend that job cuts implicitly will lead to service cuts.

County officials contend that the job cuts were intended to make the facility more efficient, while maintaining patient care. A restructuring plan approved last year by the Board of Supervisors called for officials to cut King/Drew’s budget by 16% over three years because its expenses were far higher than those of other county-run hospitals.

“We’re confident in our analysis that this is really an efficiency, and it’s really aligning resources to the workload,” said John Wallace, a spokesman for the county Department of Health Services.

County officials “can talk all they want about inefficiency,” said Robert Newman, an attorney for the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, which filed the suit on behalf of King/Drew’s doctors. “At the end of the day, there’s going to be a reduction in services. I would hope they would reconsider their position.”

Newman said his group believes that the county violated a June 25 temporary restraining order that prohibited service cuts at King/Drew. The union may seek to hold the county in contempt of court, he said.

The decision to halt service cuts at King/Drew follows court decisions that block proposed cuts at other facilities designed to address a looming budget gap.

In late April, a federal judge halted the closing of Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center until the county can prove that Medi-Cal patients have access to comparable care elsewhere. Two weeks later, the same judge prohibited the county from eliminating 100 beds at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. The county has appealed both decisions.

In the King/Drew case, doctors argued that the county failed to give public notice or hold hearings on the proposed cuts at King/Drew and at six comprehensive health-care centers as required by law.

County officials maintain that no hearing is necessary because the cuts at King/Drew will not reduce services. Attorneys for Neighborhood Legal Services of L.A. County, which joined the case on behalf of indigent patients, said the county should just hold the hearing. “It’s a real simple solution,” said Barbara Frankel, an attorney with the group. “All this lawsuit is really about is giving the community an opportunity to say, ‘This is how it’s going to affect us.’ ”