Hospital control transferred

A UCLA hospital will take over management of the besieged Martin
Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, county officials decided
Tuesday.

King/Drew, located in south Los Angeles, has repeatedly failed
patient care inspections over the past few years, and the
government announced Sept. 22 that it would cut off funding to the
hospital on Nov. 30 if the problems were not fixed.

The nearly $200 million in federal funding King/Drew receives
annually accounts for half the hospital’s budget.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to
transfer management of King/Drew to the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center,
which is about 10 miles away from King/Drew, in an attempt to
stabilize the floundering hospital. Harbor-UCLA would also be
responsible for the day-to-day control of King/Drew.

King/Drew will remain open, but its services will be reduced to
a basic emergency room and inpatient care.

Under the plan, many services at King/Drew will move to
Harbor-UCLA, including pediatrics, obstetrics, and brain and heart
surgery, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The hospital’s 2,238 employees will all have to reapply
for their jobs, and those who are not hired back will be dispersed
to other county positions.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Bruce Chernof, chief of
the county’s Department of Health Services, told supervisors
the plan could take a year to implement. He also did not rule out
the possibility that King/Drew may close for an unspecified amount
of time during the transition.

Some doctors at Harbor-UCLA anonymously told the Los Angeles
Times that Tecla Mickoseff, Harbor-UCLA’s executive officer,
had threatened to resign if the plan was approved.

And on Monday, a group of Harbor-UCLA doctors released a
statement questioning whether Harbor-UCLA could absorb management
of King/Drew without jeopardizing the quality of its own patient
care.

Hospital spokespeople denied that Mickoseff had any plans to
resign.

County officials encouraged the Harbor-UCLA management to stay
at the hospital during the shift.

“I understand when some people at Harbor have some
reticence,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky told the Los Angeles
Times. “This is not a time to resist. This is a time to step
up.”

The plan must still be approved by the federal Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid for King/Drew to continue receiving funding
past Nov. 30.

While the federal government does not control whether the two
hospitals merge, it can deny King/Drew funding if it determines
that transferring management to Harbor-UCLA will not sufficiently
solve King/Drew’s problems.

The government has until Nov. 30 to decide whether the proposed
merger will solve King/Drew’s problems. If the government
approves the plan, it will continue funding the hospital, but if
not, county officials will have to go back to the drawing
board.

Chernof told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that the county
would also end its affiliation with Charles R. Drew University of
Medicine and Science, which helped run King/Drew.

UCLA is affiliated with Drew’s medical education program,
which has allowed UCLA medical students to train as residents at
King/Drew.

It is not yet known what will happen to UCLA residents working
at King/Drew or how the merger will affect UCLA’s medical
centers.

On Sept. 26, UCLA health sciences spokeswoman Dale Tate told the
Los Angeles Times the university had been rotating some of its
residents out of King/Drew in anticipation of the impending merger.
About 50 residents will be moved.

“Our obligation is to those students to make sure they get
the kind of education that they should be getting,” she
said.

In a statement released Tuesday before the plan was officially
approved, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he supported the
transfer of King/Drew’s management to another county hospital
like Harbor-UCLA.

A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger said the merger came not a
moment too soon, highlighting the immediacy of the situation.

Still, Schwarzenegger said in a statement that he would like to
see the federal government extend the Nov. 30 deadline to give
county officials more time.

With reports from Bruin wire services.