LOS ANGELES
County officials on Tuesday approved a plan to fully reopen a troubled South Los Angeles hospital that has become a symbol of the area’s continued racial strife.
To the cheers of a packed hearing room, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to revive Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, where two years ago a woman with a perforated bowel was ignored and died after writhing on a waiting room floor for nearly an hour.
Under the plan, the county will provide more than $350 million in funds to rebuild the hospital and a master-planned health community surrounding it, while the University of California will staff the hospital and oversee its medical care. The hospital would be administered through a private, nonprofit organization with county and UC officials on its board.
The plan now goes to the university’s regents for consideration. Their next meeting is scheduled to begin Sept. 15.
UC officials so far have been “skittish” in negotiations, according to Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.
“We need them, we need the University of California,” said Yaroslavsky, adding that the county has made ample legal and financial assurances to the university, and the new facility would open 250 slots for medical residents.
