Hospital control transferred
A UCLA hospital will take over management of the besieged Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, county officials decided Tuesday.
King/Drew, located in south Los Angeles, has repeatedly failed patient care inspections over the past few years, and the government announced Sept. 22 that it would cut off funding to the hospital on Nov. 30 if the problems were not fixed.
The nearly $200 million in federal funding King/Drew receives annually accounts for half the hospital’s budget.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to transfer management of King/Drew to the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, which is about 10 miles away from King/Drew, in an attempt to stabilize the floundering hospital. Harbor-UCLA would also be responsible for the day-to-day control of King/Drew.
King/Drew will remain open, but its services will be reduced to a basic emergency room and inpatient care.
Under the plan, many services at King/Drew will move to Harbor-UCLA, including pediatrics, obstetrics, and brain and heart surgery, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The hospital’s 2,238 employees will all have to reapply for their jobs, and those who are not hired back will be dispersed to other county positions.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Bruce Chernof, chief of the county’s Department of Health Services, told supervisors the plan could take a year to implement. He also did not rule out the possibility that King/Drew may close for an unspecified amount of time during the transition.
Some doctors at Harbor-UCLA anonymously told the Los Angeles Times that Tecla Mickoseff, Harbor-UCLA’s executive officer, had threatened to resign if the plan was approved.
And on Monday, a group of Harbor-UCLA doctors released a statement questioning whether Harbor-UCLA could absorb management of King/Drew without jeopardizing the quality of its own patient care.
Hospital spokespeople denied that Mickoseff had any plans to resign.
County officials encouraged the Harbor-UCLA management to stay at the hospital during the shift.
“I understand when some people at Harbor have some reticence,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky told the Los Angeles Times. “This is not a time to resist. This is a time to step up.”
The plan must still be approved by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid for King/Drew to continue receiving funding past Nov. 30.
While the federal government does not control whether the two hospitals merge, it can deny King/Drew funding if it determines that transferring management to Harbor-UCLA will not sufficiently solve King/Drew’s problems.
The government has until Nov. 30 to decide whether the proposed merger will solve King/Drew’s problems. If the government approves the plan, it will continue funding the hospital, but if not, county officials will have to go back to the drawing board.
Chernof told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that the county would also end its affiliation with Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, which helped run King/Drew.
UCLA is affiliated with Drew’s medical education program, which has allowed UCLA medical students to train as residents at King/Drew.
It is not yet known what will happen to UCLA residents working at King/Drew or how the merger will affect UCLA’s medical centers.
On Sept. 26, UCLA health sciences spokeswoman Dale Tate told the Los Angeles Times the university had been rotating some of its residents out of King/Drew in anticipation of the impending merger. About 50 residents will be moved.
“Our obligation is to those students to make sure they get the kind of education that they should be getting,” she said.
In a statement released Tuesday before the plan was officially approved, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he supported the transfer of King/Drew’s management to another county hospital like Harbor-UCLA.
A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger said the merger came not a moment too soon, highlighting the immediacy of the situation.
Still, Schwarzenegger said in a statement that he would like to see the federal government extend the Nov. 30 deadline to give county officials more time.
With reports from Bruin wire services.
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