WASHINGTON — Greater Southeast Community Hospital in Washington D.C. had been stripped of its national accreditation, dropped by medical insurance companies and was being investigated for six "preventable" patient deaths between 2002 and 2003.
But over the last year, hospital administrators have been working to turn the medical center around.
They canceled vacations, demanded that patients get their medicine on time, even made sure fire extinguishers were working properly. During this period, 20% of the medical staff left or were fired.
The changes at Southeast were spearheaded by a group of outside medical consultants. One of them is now part of the team attempting to fix Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, the troubled Los Angeles County hospital that has seen a series of patient care lapses that led to several patient deaths and threatens its accreditation and federal funding.
The experiences of Southeast -- the progress that has been made, but also the serious problems that remain after a year of outside management -- offer lessons to county officials as they struggle to reform King/Drew.
"In looking at the two institutions, I see huge numbers of similarities between them," said Glenn Krasker, the consultant at Southeast who is now at King/Drew.
Krasker came to Southeast as a medical detective of sorts, trying to determine what was going wrong. He found, for example, that the system for matching blood types to patients was faulty. Three patients had died at the hospital because they had received the wrong blood type. Nurses, Krasker concluded, had incorrectly labeled patients' blood samples, prompting him to institute standardized rules.
"What I found at Greater Southeast -- and what appears to be a problem at King Drew -- is that essential safe practices of healthcare were generally lacking," he said.
Both hospitals were founded in predominantly black neighborhoods, where many residents feel their healthcare needs have long been neglected. Both have struggled to provide proper care to the streams of patients that sometimes overwhelm the facilities.
Southeast and King/Drew are also intensely political institutions, serving as powerful symbols of the community.
"There's a conviction that the healthcare needs of black people are being ignored and that these hospitals are the only institutions that can address them," said Ivan Walks, former Washington D.C. health director who worked on Southeast. "There's a lot of distrust because of historical issues."
