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LA County supervisors discuss plan for new full-service MLK hospital
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The $400 million plan to reopen King/Harbor Medical Center as a full-service hospital cleared a hurdle today. KPCC's Patricia Nazario has more on what happened at the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors' meeting.
Patricia Nazario: From the outset, Mark Ridley-Thomas reminded his fellow supervisors that they're building a new Martin Luther King Hospital.
Mark Ridley-Thomas: Not simply to be defined as the reopening of an old hospital...
Nazario: The plan includes a three-way partnership between the county, the state, and the University of California. The county's chief executive officer, Bill Fujioka, says the UC is committed to ensuring the new facility's quality of care.
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Bill Fujioka: This would be done through the provision of physician services and also would be done through, as we move forward in this process, the re-creation, the re-establishment of teaching services at the hospital.
Nazario: The UC would form a private non-profit corporation to run the hospital. Outside the meeting, longtime Watts activist Alice Harris said she also wants a local committee to monitor what happens there. She said that keeping watch on the facility could help prevent the kinds of problems that shut down the place a year-and-a-half ago.
Alice Harris: We saw when things, when they wasn't right. We saw it, but we had no voice. We just see it. Who you gonna tell?
Nazario: County supervisors said the new MLK Hospital will be seismically safe. Early sketches suggest it'll have 120 beds, an emergency room, and a full-range of health care services, including preventive care for people who live with diabetes and obesity.
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