King/Drew, Founded After '65 Watts Riots, Likely to Cut Services After Failing Inspection
By Sonya Geis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
LOS ANGELES -- Activists who fought hard to bring a hospital to south-central Los Angeles after the 1965 Watts riots are in mourning since the announcement that their beloved but deeply troubled hospital failed a crucial federal inspection and will lose more than half its funding.
While the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors weighs a proposal to slash services and turn most of King/Drew Medical Center's management over to a nearby county facility, African American community members met for a combination pep rally and wake.
"I don't want to talk about closing this hospital," Mollie Bell, a resident of nearby Compton, said at the emotional assembly Monday night. More than 300 gathered for the meeting, organized by Rep. Maxine Waters (D) and including Jesse Jackson and a who's who of local African American politicians and clergy members.
Bell held a "Save King Drew" sign as she said that Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance -- the facility that probably will take over operations and offer services to be cut at King/Drew -- is too far from south-central Los Angeles.
"The people that come here are on Medicaid. They're on fixed incomes. How are they going to get to Torrance? They don't have transportation," she said.
Martin Luther King Jr./Charles R. Drew Medical Center administrators learned Sept. 22 that they had failed an inspection by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in nine of 23 areas. As a result, the hospital will lose $200 million of its $380 million annual budget at the end of the year.
Failed inspections, mismanagement and well-publicized lapses in patient care have gradually built to a crescendo in the past 20 years. King/Drew has been out of compliance with Medicare standards since January 2004 and lost its national accreditation in early 2005.
Its trauma center was closed in 2004, dealing a blow to community pride and further diminishing emergency care in Los Angeles County, where nine emergency rooms and trauma centers have closed in the past five years.
County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, whose district includes King/Drew, said at a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday that she is disappointed the hospital will lose funding but hopes a plan to provide different specialty services at each of the county's five hospitals will bring stability to the health-care system.
"We're the safety net, and as much as I wish this hadn't come about in this way, I believe we're moving forward," Burke said.
For the activists who met in Watts the night before, though, losing services and control of the hospital looked more like a move backward.
"We fought real hard to get this in 1965. I remember the Watts riots," Bell said. "I hope we don't have to do that again."
Despite the protests, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approved the outlines of a plan to hand over management of the hospital to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and drastically reduce services at King/Drew.
The board directed Bruce A. Chernof, the Department of Health Services chief, to return in two weeks with a more detailed plan.
Although the hospital's most vocal supporters and management have always been African American, the Watts neighborhood has transformed since King/Drew opened. Today, 70 percent of the hospital's patients are Latinos.
Arturo Ybarra, director of the Watts/Century Latino Organization, a local group that assists immigrants and fosters ties with the black community, attended Monday's meeting and said afterward he was frustrated that prominent Latino politicians have not rallied around King/Drew the way black politicians have.
"In general, the Latino community in this area is deeply concerned over what is going on at King/Drew Medical Center," he said.
"This is not a matter of ethnic groups. This is not a matter of who is involved or not involved in political activism. It is a matter of essential need."
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