Founding and early history The facility's founding was spurred by the 1965
Watts Riots. In the aftermath of the unrest,
Governor Pat Brown appointed a commission to identify factors that contributed to the unrest. This result was the December 1965
McCone Report. One major finding of the report was the lack of healthcare access near the low-income neighborhoods of
South Central Los Angeles. At the time, the closest major public
trauma center was
Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, located over 10 miles (16 km) away—a problem heightened by the amount of
gang violence in the area. In 1966, DHS established a task force to develop a full-service community and teaching hospital operated by the County in conjunction with the
USC and
UCLA Medical Schools as well as the newly formed Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School, a private nonprofit medical school formed to train doctors to work in areas of urban poverty. Ground was broken on the hospital in April 1968. It was originally named the Los Angeles County Southeast General Hospital but was soon renamed
Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital, days after the namesake's
assassination. After a dedication in February, it opened on March 27, 1972, as a full-service medical center. The facility changed its name again, to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, when it became the teaching hospital of the adjacent
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. In 1981, the hospital expanded into psychiatric care by opening the
Augustus F. Hawkins Mental Health Center. In 1998, it expanded its trauma center. By the 1980s, King/Drew was part of the Drew/UCLA Undergraduate Medical Education Program, training physicians through a partnership of UCLA and Drew medical schools, and was a source of pride and jobs in the community.
The fall of King/Drew King/Drew entered the 21st century with an array of problems related to incompetence and mismanagement. A perceived lack of quality at the hospital had earned it the nickname of "Killer King." The facility employed
travel nurses from across the country in an attempt to improve conditions.
Troubles come to light On August 22, 2003, the
Los Angeles Times reported that two women connected to
cardiac monitors at King/Drew died after their deteriorating
vital signs went undetected. In December 2003, DHS closed the cardiac monitoring ward at the hospital after a third patient died under questionable circumstances. A consulting group was hired to help fix issues with the nursing staff; DHS spent nearly $1 million on this effort. In a January 13, 2004, report, the federal
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services determined that King/Drew was out of compliance with minimum requirements for receiving federal funding, citing the work of government inspectors who identified three patients who died at King/Drew after what were determined to have been grave errors by staff members. By March, CMS declared King/Drew patients were in "
immediate jeopardy" of harm or death because of medication errors at the hospital, citing numerous mistakes and threatening to pull federal government funding from the public hospital. In June, 2004 CMS again stated that patients were in jeopardy, citing the use of
Taser stun guns to subdue psychiatric patients. Yet again, it threatened to pull federal funding but backed away; federal funding made up over half of King/Drew's $400 million operating budget.
Closure of the trauma center On September 13, 2004, DHS recommended the closure of King/Drew's busy trauma unit, saying the hospital needed to put its full energy into fixing problems in other areas. Soon after, the
Los Angeles Times revealed that the
American College of Surgeons had revoked its approval of the quality of King/Drew's trauma unit in 1999 and 2003 because it failed to properly investigate questionable patient deaths, and that doctors routinely skipped meetings held to discuss treatment problems. Also in September, the
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed with CMS to hire a new consulting firm to take over operations at the hospital. By November 2004, neighborhood resistance to the proposed closures (particularly the trauma center) formed, led by
U.S. Representative Maxine Waters and joined by the Rev.
Jesse Jackson, Los Angeles Mayor
James K. Hahn, actress
Angela Bassett, and children of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In December 2004, CMS declared King/Drew patients were in "immediate jeopardy" for a third time. This time it cited the staff's heavy reliance on
Los Angeles County Police personnel to deploy Tasers to subdue combative and violent psychiatric patients. Federal funds were again threatened, but as in previous times, action was not taken. Despite protests, negative media and the near-unanimous opposition of city political leaders, the five-member Board of Supervisors voted four to zero, with one abstention, to move forward with closure of the trauma center. A
temporary restraining order was filed by a group of doctors and residents, but was denied. The trauma unit was closed in early 2005. Patients were diverted to three other hospitals, both public and private (with county subsidy). A few days later, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (now simply the
Joint Commission), citing the medical center for failing to correct severe lapses in patient care, threatened to pull its seal of approval, jeopardizing over $14 million in physician training funds. King/Drew's seal of approval was revoked in February 2005. This move gained national attention after the
Los Angeles Times ran a
Pulitzer Prize–winning five-part series reporting on "The Troubles at King/Drew." The series found that the problems at the hospital were far deeper than the public already knew and faulted the
Board of Supervisors for shying away from making needed changes, often because of racial politics. Among the other findings was that King/Drew spent more per patient than any of the three other general hospitals run by Los Angeles County, the opposite of what many hospital supporters had assumed. Problems for King/Drew became even worse over a period of four days in March 2005, when three patients died as a result of mistakes and lapses in medical care. The Board of Supervisors considered severing the hospital's relationship with Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and partnering with another medical school such as UCLA, USC, or
Loma Linda University. In April, the
Los Angeles Times reported a seventh death attributed to lapses in care by the hospital. This time, nurses and staff virtually ignored the audio and visual cues of vital-sign monitors over a period of hours.
"Make-or-break" inspection After the three previous warning holding King/Drew out of compliance with federal guidelines since January 2004, CMS and federal authorities held an unannounced last-chance inspection of the hospital that began on July 31, 2006, and was finished on August 10. On September 22, CMS informed King/Drew that the hospital still did not meet minimum patient-care standards, failing nine of the government's 23 conditions for federal funding, and thus failing the final "make-or-break" inspection. Federal regulators identified problems in nursing, pharmacy, infection control, surgical services, rehabilitation services, quality control, patients' rights, and the hospital's governing body and physical plant. Inspectors found more problems during the final inspection than they had at any time in the previous three years.
King/Drew becomes King–Harbor Radical restructuring DHS elected to move forward with a radical restructuring plan that eliminated the hospital's specialty services, severed its relationship with the Drew medical school, and proposed to place it under the management of
Harbor–UCLA Medical Center (Harbor–UCLA). King/Drew became King–Harbor to reflect the change. All employees of the hospital were interviewed, with half permitted to stay and the rest transferred to other hospitals. Approximately 1,400 employees remained. As a result of these measures, Medicare agreed to continue funding the hospital until March 31, 2007. After further negotiations, federal inspectors agreed to delay inspection until August 2007. King/Harbor had to pass this inspection. Otherwise federal funding would end on November 30, 2007. If federal funding ended, among other problems, MLK–Harbor would permanently lose 250
medical resident slots, 15% of the 1,700 in Los Angeles County. On March 6, 2007, officials from Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science announced they were suing Los Angeles County for $125 million for
breach of contract, claiming that the restructuring of the hospital terminated support to 248 medical residents and gutted the adjacent university. The two entities had collaborated since 1972. In response, Los Angeles County Board Supervisor
Mike Antonovich stated "Drew University will fail in court as they failed as a medical school." King–Harbor found itself under public criticism once again after different stories ran in both the
Los Angeles Times and
LA Weekly in late May 2007 citing serious lapses in care, one of which was fatal, at the renamed hospital. In particular, the case of patient
Edith Isabel Rodriguez, who bled to death on the emergency room floor after being ignored for 45 minutes, became a
cause célèbre of the failures and bureaucratic indifference of King–Harbor as well as political and health leaders in Los Angeles, creating or reinforcing fears that the healthcare system could not take care of people in a time of dire need. In response to public outcry, the chairman of the
U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Senator
Max Baucus (D-Mont.) asked federal regulators to address how they will protect patients at King–Harbor in light of "horrific" and "appalling" lapses in patient care. The news reports prompted a multi-day inspection by state and federal officials, and on June 7, 2007, federal health officials declared that King–Harbor had put emergency department patients in "immediate jeopardy" of harm or death, that it remained in violation of the
Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, and gave it 23 days to fix the problems or lose federal funding once and for all. If the problems were resolved in that timeline, the hospital still could have lost its federal certification because it had failed to meet the terms of a March agreement with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. During a June 18, 2007, meeting with the County Board of Supervisors, county health officials disclosed that they were still unable to meet the cornerstone pledges they had made to CMS: only about one-third of the 1,200 employees they initially projected would be shifted to other institutions had actually been reassigned, and significant control had not been effectively handed off to Harbor–UCLA. The process, supported by state politicians, including
Gov. Schwarzenegger, could take six months to a year and would force the hospital's closure. There remained serious concerns over how King–Harbor's 47,000 annual emergency department visits might be spread across the system with minimum disruption if the hospital were to close. hoping to thereby formulate and implement an orderly plan for diverting patients The County ultimately decided to not move for closure. The hospital received a brief reprieve when a June 25, 2007, inspection showed critical problems with its emergency department identified earlier in the month had been corrected, preserving federal certification and funding for the hospital until August 2007, when it must pass a broader federal review.
Closure On August 10, 2007, after the hospital failed a comprehensive review by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, federal officials decided to revoke $200 million in funding. Inspectors concluded that there was no functioning quality improvement plan at the hospital. Los Angeles County health director Dr. Bruce Chernof moved quickly to notify the county Board of Supervisors of his decision to begin shutting down the facility. The emergency department was closed by 7 p.m. that day, and ambulances were diverted to other area hospitals. The rest of the hospital was closed by August 27, 2007. With the closure of the hospital, South Los Angeles had one hospital bed per 1,000 residents, compared with a national average of three beds per 1,000 residents. ==Replacement hospital==