LOS ANGELES - Federal regulators said Friday that they are pulling $200 million in funding from a troubled hospital that serves one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, forcing it to all but shut down.
The decision came after the county-run Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital failed two federal inspections.
At a news conference late Friday, Los Angeles County’s chief medical officer told reporters that the hospital would close its emergency room Friday night and that patients would be moved to other hospitals within two weeks.
“We brought every resource to bear, but in the end it just wasn’t enough, fast enough,” Dr. Bruce Chernof said.
King-Harbor will remain open 16 hours a day, seven days a week, to offer outpatient care to people with routine medical problems, Chernof said. Ambulances will be available to take the more seriously ill to other hospitals.
During the past few years, Los Angeles County tried to improve patient care through disciplining workers, reorganizing management, closing the trauma unit and reducing the number of inpatient beds to 48.
Yet Herb Kuhn, acting deputy administrator for the U.S. Centers of Medicare and Medical Services, said a federal inspection as recently as last month found “conditions at the facility have placed the health and safety of patients at great risk.”
“While some progress has been made, significant problems persist,” Kuhn said in a statement.
