Emergency Medical Care

Authorities launched investigations Monday to determine whether rescuers properly assessed an accident scene where a 72-year-old woman was left inside a crumpled car that was towed to a police impound lot. Shirley Lee Williams of Paso Robles, Calif., died within minutes after the car driven by her son plowed into a Tarzana office complex Saturday morning, according to a preliminary report by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.

A state regulator who pushed for stronger oversight of California paramedics and backed an unsuccessful proposal to consolidate licensing of tens of thousands of emergency medical technicians has announced his resignation. Dr. Cesar Aristeiguieta, director of the state Emergency Medical Services Authority, said in an interview that he would step down Jan. 1, citing a desire to return to the private sector for personal financial reasons.

An L.A. County coroner's spokesman confirmed Tuesday that a 33-year-old man who collapsed and died last month after waiting more than three hours at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center to be treated for chest pains had had a heart attack. The county-run hospital in Sylmar had failed to administer a simple test to check whether Christopher Jones was having a heart attack when he walked into the emergency room Oct. 28.

Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries are 50% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms in California, according to a study published Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. The cost of providing healthcare and other government services to illegal immigrants looms large in the national debate over immigration. In Los Angeles County, much of the focus of that debate has been on hospital emergency rooms.

Ambulance and fire department medics disciplined for patient care problems and other wrongdoing would be tracked across the state and not be allowed to float unhindered from one jurisdiction to another under a last-minute bill that was passed late Tuesday by the California Legislature. The measure would close two major loopholes in the oversight of the state's estimated 70,000 emergency medical technicians, or EMTs.

More than 800 employees from the recently closed Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital have been assigned to the urgent care center operating there, the county health chief told supervisors Tuesday. About 700 other employees are being transferred to other county facilities; the future of 22 employees with problematic performance evaluations or competency tests is still being determined, according to a report by the county Department of Health Services.

County health officials have launched a bilingual effort to inform residents of South Los Angeles and nearby communities of the closing of the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, they told supervisors Tuesday. The $300,000 campaign includes a mailing to 300,000 households, hundreds of radio spots in English and Spanish, which will air for six weeks; ads in community newspapers and placards in buses, bus shelters and grocery stores.

During the 1994 Northridge quake, some injured Angelenos drove to local hospitals only to find them severely damaged, and had to drive elsewhere for help. But now there's a new tool that California and local officials will have in the next disaster: three full-service mobile hospitals that each have 200 beds and can be rapidly deployed wherever needed in the state. Los Angeles County has also purchased a 100-bed mobile hospital, which is expected to be delivered this week.

Something remarkable happened this year at a clinic for malnourished infants in this West Darfur village: It ran out of patients. And physicians at the Doctors Without Borders clinic haven't seen a single gunshot wound since last year. Now they're thinking about closing down because there is a hospital next door run by another aid agency, and a third center is under construction. "It's getting a bit crowded here," said Sewnet Mekonnen, the clinic's field coordinator.

Los Angeles County supervisors put their seal on the closure of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital on Monday, voting unanimously to shut inpatient services and promising to pay up to $16.3 million to nearby private hospitals and doctors bracing for a deluge of patients. At a specially convened board meeting, supervisors also released a 124-page report by federal inspectors that detailed dozens of errors and failures by the hospital during a make-or-break review last month.