Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital facts for kids

Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital or by the abbreviation MLK-LA, is a 131-bed public community hospital in the Willowbrook neighborhood of southern Los Angeles County, California. It was planned and designed to especially serve the surrounding South Los Angeles communities' needs, including those of underinsured or uninsured patients. It is jointly operated by UCLA.

The hospital opened on 7 July 2015, in a new US$208,500,000 building.

The hospital on the site of the former Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center, originally named the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, known as King/Drew. The adjacent Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Martin Luther King Jr. Outpatient Center opened in a new building in 2014.

History

The closure of Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center (King/Drew) in 2007, due to revocation of federal funding after the hospital failed a comprehensive review by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had immediate ramifications in the South Los Angeles area, which was left without a major hospital providing indigent care. In 2009, the County of Los Angeles successfully negotiated with the University of California to reach a compromise, whereby the county would provide funding for construction of a replacement hospital, and the UC system would provide physician staffing. A nonprofit foundation, the Martin Luther King Jr. – Los Angeles Healthcare Corporation, was established to administer the hospital.

Administration

The hospital is administered by Martin Luther King Jr. – Los Angeles Healthcare Corporation (MLK-LA), a private, nonprofit organization. The County of Los Angeles provided the capital funds for construction, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) health care system provides professional services and staffing.

In August 2012, MLK-LA's Board appointed Elaine Batchlor, a physician and former Chief Medical Officer for L.A. Care Health Plan, as the hospital's first Chief Executive Officer.

Operations

The hospital provides general acute care, basic emergency services, labor and delivery services, health education and outreach programs, along with other services typically provided by community hospitals, including radiology, laboratory and blood bank services.

The hospital serves a low income community where almost all the residents are African American and Latino. South LA has the lowest number of hospital beds per 100,000 people of any area in Los Angeles County. As a low income community, the main system of funding health care is Medicaid which in California pays providers very low rates.

Transportation

The hospital has walking distance access to the Metro A Line and Metro C Line stations, as well as Gardena Transit and LADOT DASH buses.