Martin Luther King Jr Drew Medical Center

Antionette Smith Epps, who was brought in to help save Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center but wound up instead presiding over its closing, left Friday, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services officials said. The county characterized Smith Epps' departure as a resignation, saying in a brief statement that she wanted "to pursue other career opportunities."

Since county officials shuttered Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center's trauma unit three years ago, rising numbers of severely injured patients have been transported to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a 10-mile drive away. The closure of the busy trauma center in Willowbrook, just south of Watts, raised concern that it would take longer to move patients and put them at greater risk of death.

A former radiologist at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of failing to pay state taxes in 2004, when he was billing the county for marathon shifts at the troubled public hospital. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Horwitz sentenced Dr. Harold A. Tate, 47, to three years' probation and ordered him to pay back taxes of $35,138 and a $10,000 fine. Dist. Atty.

Four months into a radical overhaul of the former Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center near Watts, the long-troubled hospital shrinks to its smallest size today. The restructured medical center, renamed Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, has been scaled down to just 48 beds, including six for obstetrics. Plans call for the hospital to grow to 120 beds -- far fewer than the 233 it once had.

Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science filed a $125-million lawsuit Monday against Los Angeles County, claiming breach of contract when the county cut its ties between the medical school and Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center last year. The suit accuses the county of failing to maintain standards at the hospital, resulting in the federal government's threat last fall to pull $200 million in funding.

Two years ago, Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke answered talk about closing the long-troubled Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center with an emphatic declaration: "That hospital will be closed over my dead body." But today, as the hospital faces state action to revoke its license and supervisors weigh whether to shutter the facility themselves, Burke is alive yet conspicuously silent.

Two Los Angeles County prosecutors unsuccessfully sought a grand jury investigation in 2005 into deaths at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, igniting a behind-the-scenes debate about whether alleged misconduct merited a wide-ranging criminal investigation. The prosecutors' recommendation, which was outlined in a confidential April 8, 2005, memo, grew out of frustration with the slow pace of their inquiry into two patient deaths.

South Los Angeles activist Virginia Franklin wept before Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday, recalling how her mother, a psychiatric nursing professor, would bring her students to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center to train. Holding her 5-month-old nephew Kelly, Franklin asked the four board members present, "When he wants to go to school, where's he going to do his internship?"

More than a fifth of the staff at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center has been fired or disciplined since January 2004 in an extraordinary crackdown prompted by revelations of widespread misconduct at the troubled public hospital. But weeding out misbehavior hasn't been easy.

The Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science learned Friday that it would retain its national accreditation -- crucial to maintaining physician training at long-troubled Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center near South Los Angeles. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education granted "continued accreditation" to the university after a favorable review, according to university and Los Angeles County officials, who operate King/Drew.