County officials Tuesday approved a full plan on how to transfer
management of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center to a
UCLA-affiliated hospital.
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center will merge with King/Drew Medical
Center, which has failed a number of patient-care inspections in
recent years and is in danger of losing its federal funding.
Under the plan, which county supervisors approved unanimously,
King/Drew would remain open, but only with very limited
services.
Its bed count would be reduced from 180 to 42 and major services
including pediatrics, neurosurgery and cardiac surgery would be
moved to Harbor-UCLA.
The plan must still be approved by County Medical Services in
order for King/Drew to continue receiving federal funding.
If CMS decides the management transfer will not adequately solve
King/Drew’s patient-care problems, it can still opt to cut
off the critical funding.
Patients from King/Drew would be transferred to a number of
other county and private facilities in the area.
Director of the county’s Department of Health Services
Bruce Chernof said King/Drew could not operate without that
funding.
“The hospital will close (without federal funding),”
he said Tuesday.
UCLA-affiliated hospitals such as Harbor-UCLA and Olive
View-UCLA Medical Center, a facility in Sylmar, would take in some
of King/Drew’s current patients.
Officials at some of those hospitals have raised concerns about
their facilities’ capability to absorb these patients.
Though Harbor-UCLA spokespeople were not available for comment
after the plan was officially approved, a group of doctors at
Harbor-UCLA released a statement earlier this month. The statement
questioned whether Harbor could take on many additional patients
without compromising the quality of its care.
The plan approved by the county does include steps to help
Harbor-UCLA accommodate whatever new demands it does
experience.
The plan asks County Medical Services to allocate $50 million to
fund costs related to the transition of management.
A $344 million expansion of Harbor-UCLA’s surgery unit,
which has been in the works for a long time, will also be
immediately considered for approval, supervisors said.
King/Drew must also redistribute its medical residents,
though.
Nancy Hanna, associate dean for graduate medical education at
Drew University, said some residents will be put on rotation at
UCLA hospitals. Though she said the specifics of the plan have yet
to be worked out, she said some psychiatry residents would likely
go on rotation in the UCLA hospital system. She also estimated that
around six King/Drew residents would be in UCLA hospitals at any
given time.
“There are efforts to get (Drew residents) on outside
rotations because as of Dec. 1 we need to get them out of
King/Drew,” Hanna said.
Dale Tate, a UCLA Health Sciences spokeswoman, said she was not
aware of any plans to move King/Drew residents to the UCLA Medical
Center in Westwood.
“There haven’t even been discussions (about
that),” she said.