‘I Can’t Imagine Having to Go Anywhere Else’

Race. Poverty. Disenfranchisement. All were watchwords in last week’s public hearing over Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, for years buffeted by reports of questionable deaths and lapses in care.

Los Angeles County supervisors voted 3 to 2 to consider -- in a series of hearings this fall -- closing the pediatric, obstetric and neonatology wards.

Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, director of the county Department of Health Services, said that might allow for better management of what’s left.

But no one from the public spoke up for the closure.

Two hundred people packed the room; the parade of 65 speakers lasted five hours; the makeup of the Board of Supervisors was noted -- three white men (who voted to consider the closures) and two minority women (who opposed the idea).

And the volatile history of King/Drew’s South Los Angeles area community was a common reference point.

Here are excerpts from the remarks:

* Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles):

” ... It is absolutely unthinkable that [the community] would be denied the services of pediatrics and OB/GYN. Do you understand ... we have Jordan Downs housing project, Nickerson Gardens, Avalon Gardens, Imperial Courts, Hacienda, concentrations of some of the poorest people in this state, in this county and perhaps in this nation?

“The children may not be seen at King [as a recent study suggests], but if you walk through these public housing projects, you cannot help but understand why they should be seen. The babies with sickle cell anemia, the babies born with HIV/AIDS, the children with asthma.

“No, many of them are not being seen, and I blame the hospital for not doing all of the outreach that it should do....

“Madam chairwoman and members, this is the 40th-year anniversary of the Watts insurrection, the turmoil out of which King/Drew was created. This is no time to plan to undermine the mission of King. King was developed to provide comprehensive medical services, not some wretched down description of a would-be hospital that denies basic services that are needed in this [community].

“King certainly has been mismanaged, undermined, shortchanged, misused and abused. And, yes, some patients have suffered for it. Careers have been destroyed but, more than anything else, the citizens of [the community] have been marginalized and underserved, and the only winner in all of this is the L.A. Times.” (The Times won a Pulitzer Prize this year for its reporting on the hospital.)

* Rep. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles):

“I come here today with a single message, a message that you have been hearing all the way from the halls of the medical center in Willowbrook to this Hall of Administration in downtown. Fix it. Don’t close it....

“The calls, mail, electronic messages and face-to-face communications I continue to receive on this issue are unanimous.... Don’t close it, don’t shrink it, don’t hack it up, don’t starve it of resources, don’t drain it of its professional talent, don’t hand it over to strangers, don’t pass the buck, don’t ignore it and don’t abandon the people it serves day in and day out....

“I ask that you remember why King/Drew was founded in the first place.... If it were easy or cheap or profitable to build a hospital to serve this community, it would not have taken an uprising to do it. Don’t throw away the dream that built this house of healing where the need was so great. The need is still there....

“King/Drew is a vision made real. Its conception was violent. Its birth was bloody. Its gestation was long and its maturity has been slow in coming. But if you take it away or shrink it into irrelevance, you will be sending a message and starting a sad cycle all over again. The message will be that there are those in our midst who don’t deserve to be cared for in an accessible manner. And the cycle will be set in motion by those who don’t care, turning their backs once again, to walk away, inviting the same bitter sequence of events we endured 40 years ago....

* Lynwood Councilwoman Leticia Vasquez:

“The city of Lynwood is the home of [private, nonprofit] St. Francis Medical Center, which is the hospital that has basically been forced to pick up the trauma patients that the [King/Drew] hospital can no longer serve.

“Our services to trauma care patients have more than doubled since the closure of the trauma center [at King/Drew], so our hospital has greatly been impacted.

“St. Francis hospital has been forced to scramble to create a different department, which now is called the Fast Track Emergency Care Center, in order to fill the void and the gap that is currently there because of the closure of the trauma center. The recommendation to downsize services at King/Drew Medical Center would have a further strain on the medical services....

* Dr. Carlyle Langhorn, first-year emergency room resident at King/Drew:

“I’ve seen women, pregnant women, children, adults with trauma, who have really been saved and benefited by the services provided. And I believe that the piecemeal cutting of services that has taken place thus far and that is proposed undermines the community, undermines the mission of the hospital and will ultimately undermine my training as a physician at King/Drew.”

* Dr. Marcelle Willock, retired dean at the affiliated Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science:

“The Department of Health Services continues to provide this Board of Supervisors with half-truths regarding King and mismanages it. What do I mean by half-truths?

“Yes, the number of deliveries has fallen, but have you asked why? Centralized fetal monitoring of the mothers and babies has been standard for 20 years. That was only provided at King in September of 2004. LDRs -- rooms where a patient can labor, deliver and recover -- have been standard. It is such at [Harbor-UCLA] and ‘Big County’ [County-USC Medical Center], but yet King does not have that.

“Our patients are poor, but they’re not stupid. They know where they can go. St. Francis remodeled to make it attractive for their patients, whereas King didn’t.

“And lastly, the decisions ... are made by DHS leadership, which are all old white males. And, when I look at this board -- and I don’t mean to [be] confrontational, but I think this has to be said -- we’re talking about women and children, and we need women to make important decisions with this regard. I’m sorry, gentlemen. You are not as sensitive as you should be.

* Barry Weiss, Interfaith Communities United for Peace and Justice:

“I live in Encino, I’m an attorney with healthcare clients, I practiced law, I’ve practiced law in Century City for approximately 20 years and, in case you haven’t noticed, I am an old, white male. So what do I have to do with the King/Drew hospital in South Los Angeles?

“I’m here today to tell you that my community supports King/Drew as a full-service medical center for our brothers and sisters in South Los Angeles as a matter of what is justice and what is right....

“I want you to know that Westside progressives will stand together with our brothers and sisters in South Los Angeles on this issue. We recently organized to elect a councilperson, to help elect a mayor and to assist hotel workers successfully resist multinational hotel corporations in their struggle. We’re staying organized.

“And Dr. Garthwaite, I’m going to take a little bit of the heat and place it elsewhere. We’re looking at this Board of Supervisors and particularly you, Supervisor Yaroslavsky. This would not happen in West Los Angeles. Your motion [to formally consider closing the pediatric and other wards] is a disgrace!

* Renee Rachal, area resident:

“I’m here representing the single mothers and the children. I, myself, was a single parent, had two chronic asthmatic children that, from time to time, when my car broke down, I was on the bus with them in the middle of the night, rushing them to the emergency [room] to get treatment.

“I can’t imagine having to go anywhere else. I can’t imagine going to Harbor [near Torrance] or [County]-USC [Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles]. Please consider keeping the hospital a comprehensive medical center, exactly what the mission was in the beginning after the riots.

* Dewayne Anderson, area resident:

“2000, Fourth of July, I was caught in a gang shootout and I was shot about eight times. I was sent to the trauma unit at King/Drew. They pretty much saved my life. When I was there as a patient inside the hospital, that’s when I realized what I wanted to do.

“From that point on, I got myself in school, I work as a TA [teaching assistant] for 96th Street Elementary School, been doing that for the last three years. If it wasn’t for that hospital, I don’t think I’d have been able to teach kids how to read, how to do math. It had a profound effect in the community.

“Dr. Garthwaite’s recommendation to close down the pediatrics, OB/GYN; that will have a ripple effect. Those are people that can be saved, be helped, and those people that [are] saved can help someone else.” Former supervisor and longtime King/Drew supporter “Kenneth Hahn, he left a legacy, a legacy of doing good for other people. I’d just ask that the rest of you do the same thing.”

Source: Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. For a full transcript of the remarks, go to www.lacounty.info/transcripts.htm