Gov. urges continued funding of King/Drew

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has urged federal regulators to delay revoking $200 million from Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and to pay $50 million more to smooth the troubled facility’s shift to another hospital’s control, L.A. County health officials said Tuesday.

Regulators at the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are reviewing the county’s plan to save King/Drew, county health department chief Dr. Bruce Chernof told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. He said he was “hopeful” that the agency would endorse it before a Nov. 6 public hearing on the reorganization plan.

Last week Chernof sent federal officials the so-called MetroCare proposal, which would turn management of the Willowbrook hospital over to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, 10 miles away near Torrance. King/Drew failed a crucial federal health inspection earlier this year, resulting in the funding loss, which represents nearly half of its annual financing. Because the county lacks enough money to compensate, supervisors decided to downsize the hospital and shift many services to Harbor-UCLA, which also is a county facility.

Schwarzenegger’s letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt asks for “no break in federal funding at the hospital” as patients are temporarily transferred from King/Drew to other county hospitals, specialty services relocated and the staff overhauled. The governor praised the plan, approved by supervisors last week, as “clear evidence” of reform, and emphasized the vital need for funding to implement it.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, whose district includes King/Drew, called the letter “right on point.”

“The governor is in a key position” to deal with Medicare regulators, Burke said.

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susannah.rosenblatt@latimes.com