The University of California is prepared to seriously discuss reopening Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital as its sole operator, the system's provost said Friday.
"We are willing to look at anything that will help the state and the people of South-Central Los Angeles," Provost Wyatt "Rory" Hume said in an interview. "We've always been supportive of healthcare in South-Central, so it's not a new area for us, and we'll continue that commitment."
He emphasized, however, that the university was proceeding with extraordinary caution and continued to prefer a scenario in which the university would play only academic and clinical roles at the hospital near Watts, while a third party acted as administrator.
The university's ability to take over King entirely, Hume said, could be derailed by insufficient funds to operate a hospital at which most of its patients have been uninsured. It also could be difficult for the university and the county to agree on a way to allow the hospital to operate independent of the county Board of Supervisors.
The university has been the county's first choice to reopen the hospital since it closed in August. Federal regulators pulled funding after years of medical mistakes and personnel failings that harmed patients. In January, however, University President Robert C. Dynes said that the university was consumed with other priorities and lacked the leadership or money to reopen King.
The university's new willingness to talk follows the failed county search for another provider willing to reopen the hospital. In an opinion piece in Wednesday's editions of The Times, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky called the University of California "the last, best hope for reopening King-Harbor."
Yaroslavsky offered inducements that he said he hoped would make an agreement possible, including a promise to cede the governance and day-to-day management of the hospital to the university.
He said the university also would be allowed to assume total control over staffing and would not be subject to the county's hiring and employment rules that many blame for the failures in staff competency at the hospital.
Others in the county government said Yaroslavsky generally spoke for the county at large in the piece, including County Chief Executive William T. Fujioka and Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, whose district includes the shuttered hospital.
