LOS ANGELES – The University of California and local officials are weighing a proposal to reopen a troubled south Los Angeles County public hospital that was closed after years of negligence and patient deaths.
The proposal announced Wednesday aims to reopen Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital by late 2012 through the creation of a private, independent nonprofit group to run the hospital, rather than the county.
All five members of the county Board of Supervisors issued laudatory statements about the proposal, calling the reopening feasible, vital and critically needed.
Built to serve the poor and minorities in the wake of the 1965 Watts riot, the facility has provided only outpatient services since August 2007 after the hospital was largely shut down.
Formerly known as Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center, the hospital is treasured by the Black community as a symbol of post-riot renewal and treats one of the poorest regions of the county, with an estimated 700,000 residents within its service area.
In recent years, federal inspectors repeatedly uncovered problems at the facility, ranging from lax sanitation of medical equipment to inattentive care that endangered lives. Those lapses in care caused the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to revoke $200 million in federal funding.
In one egregious case, Edith Isabel Rodriguez died in 2007 of a perforated bowel after writhing in pain on the emergency room floor for 45 minutes without receiving care. Security camera footage showed Rodriguez on the floor as a janitor mopped around her and a nurse dismissed her complaints.
