Post-mortems on King-Harbor

Re “King-Harbor is quiet after ER closure,” Aug. 12

Closing Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital is not the answer. It is like sweeping the dust under the carpet. Is there such a labor shortage that King-Harbor only employs basically inefficient, inhumane and unqualified people? Or is it that King-Harbor is not in an affluent area and has been ignored throughout the years? It is a shame that so many people will have to be displaced because of negligence and failure of the authorities to take serious action against those involved in the decline of King-Harbor.

Dora Zephyr

Los Angeles

King-Harbor’s failure to pass the crucial federal inspection was no surprise to me and should have been no surprise to anyone who had been following this sad and tragic saga. After nursing and hospital personnel watched, went about their daily work and ignored a patient as she lay writhing on the floor for almost 45 minutes, it should have been apparent that the staff had reached rock bottom. When a staff reaches this level there is little that can be done to correct the death spiral, except closure.

What remains to be seen now is whether the L.A. County Board of Supervisors will mandate real change, clean house and reopen King-Harbor with personnel who are committed to providing the best possible care to the community it serves. Or perhaps the supervisors will do as they did the last time King-Drew failed, which was to give raises and promotions to those specifically tasked to save the hospital.

Geneviève M. Clavreul

Pasadena

The writer is a registered nurse.

So the government can’t save a government-run healthcare facility that failed despite monumental efforts by the government to save it. So much for government-run healthcare.

Gary Hall

Los Angeles

Can someone explain why the federal government feels it is OK to give poorly managed banks billions of dollars the same week it denies money to King-Harbor for similar failures to perform properly?

Edward Saade

Poway

Now that King-Harbor will finally close, will The Times be publishing an obituary stating where I will be able to view L.A. County Supervisor Yvonne Burke’s dead body?

Fred Tuck

Los Angeles