King-Drew Redux

The destruction of the county health system continues, as documented in Harbor-UCLA emergency room patients are in jeopardy, state inspectors say. What is going on now at Harbor-UCLA and the Sylmar hospitals is just an early step toward what was done to King-Drew over the past few years. The same threat used to close King-Drew, the loss of federal funding, now sits on the plate of two of the remaining county hospitals.

As more emergency rooms are shut down and more funding cut to these hospitals, the downward spiral of public health accelerates. The article lays out statistics for the Downey Regional Medical Center, where many patients who would have gone to King-Drew are now turning up. They are over-capacity for their rooms and understaffed to be able to handle the increased load. The VP there admitted, "It's not unusual to hold 10 or more patients in the emergency room waiting for rooms upstairs, and we never used to do that."

The real solution for these hospitals is not to cut funding, but to put more in (or to stop wasting it on management). You don't improve medical care by cutting staff, but by hiring more doctors, nurses, and support staff. A large chunk of the mistakes that cost people their health – and in the worst cases their lives – are because the staff is overworked. Don't expect any administrator or politician to sincerely propose this.