Feds Say Clean Up or Shut Down for MLK Hospital

Late yesterday, federal health officials told Los Angeles County and Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital (formerly King-Drew) that MLK had 23 days to clean up its act or it would lose federal funding forever, period end of story.

The ultimatum was a result of an inspection into two separate incidents: One was the death, reported by the LA Times, of 43-year-old woman, Edith Isabel Rodriguez, who was left writhing in pain on MLK’s emergency-room lobby floor, while ER nurses and staff ignored her.

The other incident involved Juan Ponce, the man who spent four days in the hospital’s emergency room waiting for treatment for a life-threatening combination of a brain tumor and obstructive hydrocephalus.

The latter story was reported for the LA Weekly by….well….me.

The multi-day inspection caused inspectors to conclude that the hospital put emergency room patients in “immediate jeopardy” of harm or death, reports the LA Times .

I hope the hospital survives.…but not if it keeps threatening the lives of patients.