Hospital Avoids Federal Funds Cutoff

Federal health officials on Wednesday rescinded a threat to pull funding from Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center after the public hospital agreed to limit the use of police officers and Taser stun guns to subdue psychiatric patients.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that the hospital’s mental patients were in “immediate jeopardy” of harm because police were using Tasers and leather restraints to control them.

In the past year, officers from the Los Angeles County Office of Public Safety have shot eight patients with Tasers.

The devices can deliver up to 50,000 volts of electricity over five seconds, immobilizing a person and causing him or her to fall. Some of the patients shot with Taser darts suffered injuries, but none died.

A federal report released this week details the eight cases in which Tasers were used at King/Drew, which is owned by the county.

One patient was struck with Taser darts four times in February after he used his fist to hit a police officer and bit an officer trying to handcuff him.

When the patient did not calm down, an officer placed the Taser directly against the man’s body and shocked him three more times -- again to no avail. He was finally subdued and placed in leather restraints, the report said.

In June 2003, another patient was shot with a Taser four or five times after grabbing a female employee by the neck and carrying her to the exit door, demanding to be released. Both fell to the floor and were injured. When the Taser failed to calm the patient, officers struck him with their hands and feet, according to the federal report.

Health inspectors said King/Drew should have trained its staff members on how to intervene in such situations before calling police. Some of the patients’ medical records, they said, did not include any description of what steps had been attempted before police were called -- or even that Tasers had been used. Inspectors said they had to rely on the police reports to learn what occurred.

King/Drew had until Saturday to make changes or have its federal funding stopped. The funding accounts for more than half of the hospital’s $350-million budget.

In response to the criticism, King/Drew temporarily banned police officers from using Tasers and restraints on patients.

Longer term, the hospital plans to create a behavioral management response team, whose job will be to help defuse aggressive patients without using force.

The county’s public safety officers will also be instructed that “weapons are not to be used as healthcare interventions and are only to be used when the ... officer is acting purely in a law enforcement capacity,” according to a plan of correction submitted by King/Drew to the federal government.

Similar policies will be put in place at the county’s other public hospitals, which also have relied on police help to subdue patients.

Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, director of the county Department of Health Services, said his agency has not yet worked out details of the new policy. But, he said, the lifting of the funding threat is proof that King/Drew is making progress.

“This is a significant step in the right direction,” Garthwaite said.

Wednesday’s action marked the second time this year that King/Drew, a 233-bed hospital in Willowbrook just south of Watts, has staved off a loss of federal funding.