King/Drew to Lose 3rd Program

A national accrediting group has stripped Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center of its ability to train aspiring neonatologists -- making it the third training program there in recent months ordered to close.

The shutdown of the neonatology fellowship, effective June 2005, was another dose of bad news for the Willowbrook hospital, just south of Watts, and its affiliated medical school.

The Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education had decided previously to close the surgery and radiology training programs at King/Drew, effective next month. The group rarely takes such action against one training program at a hospital, let alone three.

Three of King/Drew’s 18 residency programs -- anesthesia, family practice and internal medicine -- are also on probation. The hospital’s oversight of its entire graduate medical education program also has been deemed substandard by the council.

In closing the neonatology fellowship, the accrediting group said the hospital did not treat enough sick babies to adequately train doctors, among other things, said Harry E. Douglas III, interim president of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, which runs the training programs at King/Drew.

“It was sort of expected, but we were looking for a different kind of decision,” Douglas said.

Neonatologist Roberta Bruni said she believed the accrediting council was out to shut down the entire hospital.

“The people who wrote this don’t seem to have a handle on what exactly they’re talking about,” she said. “They’re referring to numbers and data that don’t have any base in reality. I think this is just a game they’re playing with us.”

In the first four months of this year, the hospital treated 14 babies weighing less than 2.2 pounds, Bruni said, far more than most hospitals of its size handle.

The three-year neonatal fellowship, one of the smallest training programs at the hospital, accepts only one new doctor each year.

Los Angeles County health officials are separately trying to restrict King/Drew’s ability to care for the sickest newborns by downgrading the status of its neonatal intensive-care unit.

The unit historically has been one of the hospital’s most cherished services and the proposal to downgrade it has been met with intense community opposition.

The county is expected to hold a public hearing on the downgrading in June before the Board of Supervisors considers finalizing it.

Douglas said the university was working hard to maintain and improve its remaining doctor-training programs. The accreditation of its emergency medicine and pediatrics residencies was renewed recently.