A small private hospital in Long Beach has emerged as the leading candidate to take on one of the biggest healthcare challenges in Southern California: reopening Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, some key Los Angeles County officials said.
Pacific Hospital of Long Beach, which offers only basic emergency services and relatively few specialized programs, is in negotiations with the county to provide in- patient services for residents of South Los Angeles and surrounding communities, some of the region's poorest.
Some challenging details remain to be worked out and another operator still could win the contract, but Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke said Pacific is the clear front-runner despite its size and its lack of experience with such large, complex institutions as public hospitals.
Burke, whose district includes the closed hospital, said in an interview this week that she expected negotiations to be completed with Pacific within 60 days.
"If I had to guess," Burke said, "it's going to be February when the hospital is reopened."
Such a decision would appear to be a financial and managerial gamble for the county and the private hospital, but it would be warmly welcomed by community leaders, who have been highly critical of the county's decision to close long-troubled King-Harbor and have been pressing for its reopening.
A major obstacle has been how much the county is willing to reimburse a private operator for what is usually costly care.
"We are just praying that it opens," said "Sweet" Alice Harris, 74, a longtime Watts activist. "We are keeping a low profile so that we don't incite a riot, with the hope that all we have to do is wait."
Pacific's president, Clark Todd, said his company's proposal is to reopen the hospital with 77 beds initially, far fewer than the 400 beds once available at the Willowbrook site. "We have to have something that is manageable to begin with," Todd said.
The county ended inpatient services at King-Harbor in August after years of failed attempts by the Board of Supervisors to reform the historic institution, treasured by African Americans as a symbol of renewal after the 1965 Watts riots.
The closure occurred under pressure from state and federal regulators whose latest sanctions followed the death of a 43-year-old woman who writhed unattended on the floor of the emergency room lobby for 45 minutes.
