The Los Angeles Times reports, “King/Drew Fails Final U.S. Test.”

Federal regulators notified Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center late Friday that it had failed what was billed as a “make or break” inspection and would lose annual funding of about $200 million — more than half the hospital’s budget — at the end of the year.

The move is likely to force Los Angeles County to close the long-troubled public hospital, give it to someone else to run or turn it into a clinic, as officials have repeatedly acknowledged.

During a lengthy meeting, federal inspectors told King/Drew officials that the hospital still did not meet minimum patient-care standards.

King/Drew has been out of compliance with federal guidelines since January 2004, when it was first cited for serious lapses in care that had injured and killed patients.

During the latest inspection, the hospital failed nine of the government’s 23 conditions for federal funding, according to a letter from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that was hand-delivered Friday to King/Drew’s administrator.

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.

In fact, inspectors found more problems in the supposedly reformed King/Drew than they had at any time in the last three years. Some of the life-threatening lapses cited were nearly identical to those found in the past.

For instance, the letter said, “there were no appropriately trained and competent staff, on the 3E unit, assigned to watch the heart monitors of seriously ill patients who required cardiorespiratory monitoring. This is especially troublesome, because previously documented cases showed that patients died when nurses at King/Drew failed to heed heart monitor warnings.”

For those who don’t know, King/Drew has been in trouble for years now (The Los Angeles Times won a Pulitzer Prize for their series “The Troubles at King/Drew” a couple of years ago.) Today’s article gives a good summation of its prominence in the community:

The 252-bed hospital south of Watts is one of the few sources of acute healthcare for the uninsured in South Los Angeles, most of them African American or Latino. King/Drew has enormous symbolic value as well: It was created to remedy racial inequities in healthcare after the 1965 Watts riots and has long been a source of pride — and jobs — in the community.

The importance of the hospital in its community makes this story even more sad. Other stories in the last three years have talked about King/Drew’s immunity to change and criticism in the past since there were some supporters who would cry “racism” if anyone said anything negative against the hospital. But after so many deaths and serious cases of malpractice, those cries of racism seem to be weak defense. It actually seems to be more racist to let the hospital continue as it is. People are dying unnecessarily while at King/Drew and that is unjust. King/Drew’s reputation is so bad that there are reports of people jumping out of the back of ambulances when they heard that they were being taken to King/Drew.

Though I think this decision to shut down King/Drew even more is the right one—granted my opinions come from a very comfortable distance as I’ve never even visited the hospital, I just know what is happening there from news reports—I think that it is a terrible decision in that many people will be negatively affected. As seen above, there will be a loss of jobs and a loss of pride for a community. Also, the Los Angeles County health care is stretched unbelievably thin and King/Drew’s problems are merely the worst in an inefficient system that has seen several trauma centers close in recent years while the population of the area has steadily increased. The nightmarish waits people have in emergency rooms or for other medical procedures will only increase. The medical residents in King/Drew will likely have to find new programs to enter into in order to finish their training. Anyone who worked for King/Drew and now has to find new work has a huge albatross hanging around their resume.

So this is a move that is right, in my opinion. The poor quality of care had to change and the hospital didn’t make those changes. But it is a decision that will hurt for a while. Please pray that somehow the Los Angeles County health system could reform its ways and that an excellent, well-run, and capable hospital in the Watts area could reopen soon.