Patients wonder what the future holds if King closes - The uninsured and those without cars face particular risk, residents say. Area clinics and ERs in other communities brace for an onslaught.
In Willowbrook just south of Watts, Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital serves a population that is poorer and less likely to be insured than anywhere else in Los Angeles County. Many in surrounding neighborhoods have heard over the years about the mismanagement and botched care that have put the hospital on the brink of collapse. But most say they don't know where they would go if King-Harbor closed.
"What are people going to do if they don't have cars and depend on public transportation?" asked Frederick O. Murph, senior minister at Brookins Community AME Church. "What if they have a stroke in the middle of the night?"
Those were precisely the sorts of questions that led Los Angeles County supervisors to open the hospital 35 years ago in the aftermath of the Watts riots. At its peak, the hospital, formerly known as King/Drew, was a teaching facility that offered such high-level services as neurosurgery.
But it has been unable to meet minimum federal standards for patient care since January 2004. After the hospital failed what was billed as a make-or-break federal inspection last fall, the county slashed more services, ended physician-training programs and reduced the number of beds to 48 from about 250.
The current Board of Supervisors says it will be forced to close virtually all that remains of King-Harbor if it fails another crucial federal inspection -- which in turn will trigger a loss of $200 million in federal funds -- that was conducted last month. The board expects to hear from investigators by Wednesday.
The county has a plan for closing King-Harbor: An urgent care center and clinics for diabetes, high blood pressure and other outpatient care would remain open. Ambulances would be directed to emergency rooms at other hospitals. The county would staff more beds at its other hospitals and pay to add beds at some private ones.
Nevertheless, the 73 other public and private hospitals in the county's already stressed emergency network are bracing for greater backlogs and longer waits. The seven nonprofit community health clinics near King-Harbor, some already at capacity, fear an onslaught of new patients. And healthcare advocates predict that people who already delay getting help because they don't have insurance or a regular physician will go without treatment altogether, with fatal consequences.
