November 05, 2006|John Balzar |
Times Staff Writer It's a small campus along a side street where Willowbrook meets Watts in South Los Angeles. You'd hardly know from looking that so many dreams have been at work here for such a long time. Even those who care most about the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science have been heard to joke among themselves that it is just two buildings and a trailer park.
But Drew was in quest of better. Wind the clock back four months, and there was a feeling at the inner-city university that better times had arrived. The school had a new president, the promise of political support, plans for a big expansion and fresh accreditation for its residency doctors.
Plus, that one all-important thing that Drew often lacked -- respect -- seemed at least plausible.
Then the roof collapsed. In a span of a little more than a month, the university was swept into the fight over its place as a healthcare provider for the poor in some of the poorest Los Angeles neighborhoods.
Its next steps are by no means certain, and its future is clouded as never before.
"If you ask me, 'Are we going to survive?' I haven't any doubt," said Susan Kelly, who marked her six-month anniversary as Drew's president last week. "But what it's going to look like, what pitfalls lay ahead, I can't tell you."
Many links to hospital
For more than a generation, the independent university has been linked in name, in fact and in controversy with the county-administered public hospital across the street, the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. The university's medical school has provided resident doctors for the hospital, and the hospital in turn served as a training ground for Drew's students.
Together, the two institutions were an important part of Los Angeles County's answer to the Watts riots of 1965.
Indeed, Drew University came into being with a mission to train minority doctors who would serve poor, inner-city residents. It began instructing newly graduated doctors in medical specialties, with up to 300 residents at a time on the wards, and in the operating rooms and emergency room at King/Drew.
Then, Drew University established a college to grant basic medical degrees in partnership with UCLA, with students spending their first two years at UCLA and the final two at Drew. The goal was not only to provide healthcare for the poor but also to expand opportunities for young African Americans -- and later other minorities -- to study medicine.
By 2005, according to the independent California Wellness Foundation, more than one-third of minority doctors in Los Angeles County received training at the university.
Apart from physician training, Drew also established a separate 300-student College of Science and Health to train medical technicians, counselors and physician assistants. The university undertook research projects aimed at the specific healthcare problems of uninsured, mostly minority communities.
Periodic crises
But it hasn't been a smooth journey. Just as Drew University shared its beginnings with King/Drew, just as the two teamed up to provide healthcare and medical training, the institutions wound up with something else in common: troubles.
Over the years, the quality of care, the oversight of schooling, the efficacy of administration all came under intermittent and withering criticism.
Going back at least to the 1980s, Drew University has had periodic credentialing crises for various residency programs. More recently, three were shut down: radiology, surgery and neonatology. At one point, millions spent training Drew's residents could not be accounted for, by either the university or the hospital. Auditors found that costs for Drew's faculty and academic support were 57% higher than at a comparable hospital, Harbor UCLA Medical Center near Torrance.
David Satcher, former surgeon general of the United States, concluded in a 2003 report that Drew University and the county hospital lacked a "working partnership." He called for a new "culture of accountability."
In response, Drew University revamped its board and ultimately brought in Kelly. She embarked on a campaign to expand the university on several fronts and to draw public attention to accomplishments that had gone unsung. Drew received a favorable review and full accreditation of its residency program. The university's endowment grew.
It was too late.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' decision to pull $200 million in federal funding from the medical center hit the university hard and dead center. The county responded with a plan to downsize the King/Drew medical center, and Drew University quickly found itself without an affiliated teaching hospital.
Soon, the accreditation of its residency program was jeopardized. So was money to pay salaries for 251 current residents. Last Wednesday, Drew's administrators announced that they would withdraw from residency instruction beginning in July, the start of the 2007 academic year.
But even this did not end Drew's struggles.
County support
