The Trauma Center

Monday night’s public hearing on closing the trauma unit at the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center was a hearing in name only. Neither Los Angeles County officials, who called for closing the unit, nor the 1,000-plus people who came to protest, really listened to what the other side had to say. The divide was as deep as the red-blue fissure in the presidential election, and the discourse as uncivil.

Closing a trauma unit is inevitably, well, traumatic. Rarer than ordinary hospital emergency rooms, trauma units are equipped to treat the most severe injuries, from the aftermath of car crashes to gunshots. This editorial page supports closing the unit, which may be the only way to save the rest of the hospital. But that’s not what Monday’s six-hour marathon and Tuesday’s lengthy follow-up meeting were about, thanks in large part to how clumsily the Board of Supervisors has handled the matter.

On Monday, it was as if the two sides spoke different languages and described opposing realities. The perspective of the largely African American audience, to whom King/Drew is as much a symbol as a hospital, was summed up by a sign: “Don’t disrespect or underestimate us.” Clearly, many felt that the county officials already had, a sentiment that only increased as 100 or more people lined up early to get into the auditorium, only to be kept waiting in the hot sun until five minutes after the hearing was scheduled to start. Inside, the five supervisors and top Health Services Department officials waited in air-conditioned comfort.

Things got hotter fast. Technically, the supervisors have not yet voted to close the trauma unit, at least not publicly. But they announced plans to do so in September after meeting in secret, a dismayingly habitual practice and a probable violation of state law. Feeling disrespected by what it saw as a sham hearing, the audience repaid county officials with often-hostile testimony. Supervisors’ claim that the opening of a new trauma center downtown had nothing to do with the closure of King/Drew’s center made the audience feel it was being lied to, and it deepened suspicions that supervisors want to close the hospital entirely.

The same meeting looked very different from the county officials’ perspective. King/Drew’s myriad problems have topped the agenda for the last year. The Health Services Department sent its second-in-command and managers from other county hospitals to try to fix a pattern of patient deaths and errors. It just spent $13 million to bring in outside experts. Yet angry speakers used “trauma unit” interchangeably with “emergency room” and “hospital,” as though the county were trying to shut down King/Drew entirely instead of doing all it can to keep it open. The audience blamed King/Drew’s patient deaths and other problems on county neglect and called for the head of Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, the county’s health services director.

“Can’t we arrive at common ground?” asked the Rev. Jesse Jackson after eloquently describing a traumatized community’s fears. Replied county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky: “It is a medical issue, Rev. Jackson. It is not a political issue.”

At King/Drew, of course, it is both. The county could sure use some help from real community leaders -- not those trying to win points by stoking fears -- to help bridge the political divide.