Other than in Robin Cook novels, hospitals are supposed to help people not kill them. However, deep in the center of Los Angeles is one of the worst performing medical facilities in the country. Even the normally apologizing Los Angeles Times did a multi-day series on the hospital’s fatal shortcomings. Articles with titles like “Deadly Errors and Politics” and “Underfunding a Myth but Squandering is Not” tell stories of near-ubiquitous paid absentee rate among staff and of patients being admitted for minor injuries only to be killed through grossly negligent care. One patient died when his nurse turned off his cardiac arrest alarm “because it was making too much (damn) noise.”

Who or what do we have to thank for this death trap and monetary sinkhole? Politics. King/Drew was born out of the promised reconstruction following Los Angeles’ race riots in the 60’s. The hospital is under the purview of the notoriously ineffective Los Angeles Board of Supervisors. Instead of tackling the root causes of this deadly debacle including its unions, work rules, and decision-making based on everything other than qualifications, the pols have scrambled to point the finger elsewhere. Without denying the truthfulness of the Los Angeles Times articles, Representative Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) attacked the paper’s coverage as a blatant attempt to win a Pulitzer Prize (ed. Note: is this what papers are supposed to do?). Water’s logic seems to be that we’d all be better off if the press would just stop making such a big deal about the deaths, waste, corruption and other problems at King/Drew. Not surprisingly, her sentiment is echoed by King/Drew staff members. Quoth the hospital’s Dr. Samuel Sachs, “we have nothing to apologize for.” Tell that to the families of those who unnecessarily died at the hospital or those receiving substandard care at other area hospitals because of the wasted funds being sucked up by King/Drew.

My favorite findings on King/Drew:

In the last five years, King/Drew has spent nearly $34 million on employee injuries–53% more than Harbor-UCLA and more than any of the University of California medical centers, some of which are double or triple King/Drew’s size. Employees make claims for such things as damage to their “psyche,” assaults by their colleagues and a variety of freak accidents, according to a Times review of workers’ compensation claims.

Last year, King/Drew employees billed for 299,804 hours of overtime, costing the hospital nearly $9.9 million. That’s 61% more than the sum spent by Harbor-UCLA, which has about 400 more workers. Fourteen King/Drew employees pulled in more than $50,000 each in overtime. At Harbor-UCLA, there was one.

Some employees habitually fail to show up, logging weeks, even months, of unexcused absences each year. And those who do come to work often don’t do their jobs, causing one consultant in 2002 to remark that they had “retired in place.” Others are distracted or impaired. County Civil Service Commission filings tell of staff members grabbing and clawing each other’s necks; inspection reports tell of patients literally dying of neglect.

King/Drew pays its ranking doctors lavishly. Some draw twice what their counterparts make at other public hospitals –often for doing less. Eighteen King/Drew physicians earned more than $250,000 in the last fiscal year, including their academic stipends. Harbor-UCLA had nine.

One can get sick reading these reports, but just make sure that you don’t get taken to King/Drew or you could easily end up a statistic.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 21st, 2005 at 6:22 am by Insider and is filed under California Schemin', Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.