In a unanimous vote that sparked cheers of "thank you" from the audience, University of California regents on Thursday approved a partnership with Los Angeles County that clears the way to reopen the Martin Luther King Jr. medical facility in Willowbrook, possibly by 2013.
The regents, some expressing concern about potential pitfalls, said they acted out of a moral imperative to aid the South L.A. community for which the hospital was once a point of pride. But many hurdles remain.
"This is a proud day for the University of California," said UC President Mark G. Yudof. "The reopening of Martin Luther King Hospital will provide not just adequate care but the best care to the underserved."
The agreement, which creates a nonprofit entity to oversee the hospital and handle all hiring, is a crucial step in reviving the long-troubled facility, which shut down two years ago after repeated findings that inadequate care had led to patient injuries and deaths. Dire problems at the hospital were the subject of Times investigations in 1989 and in 2004, a series that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
Many view the death of Edith Rodriguez, 43, in May 2007 as the final straw. Rodriguez had writhed on the emergency room floor for 45 minutes as a janitor swept around her, an incident captured on security video. Within months, the ER and inpatient units were closed after federal officials threatened to pull funding.
L.A. County supervisors had initially promised to reopen the hospital by this year.
Under the plan, the King hospital will be considerably smaller than it had been, 120 beds instead of 233. It will include an emergency room and three operating rooms but no trauma center, a sore point with some supporters.
Even so, numerous improvements will be needed at the campus, which was built in 1972. Plans call for a new outpatient clinic and substantial interior construction at the existing tower, at a cost of more than $350 million.
Before they voted, Eddie Island urged his fellow regents to not delay.
"There is no greater public good than to engage and embrace the need a community has for healthcare," said Island, a retired Santa Monica attorney who called partnership "the right thing to do."
After the vote, several hundred supporters gathered outside the hospital, now the site of an outpatient clinic, as Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas shared hot dogs with constituents. Erma Hall-Wood, a retired county nurse, recalled that she wept when the hospital was shuttered.
