Cliffhanger at MLK

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has alerted Los Angeles County politicians and health officials that it is moving to revoke the operating license of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, after the governor met with community leaders and decided the facility must close down.

Schwarzenegger's press aide, Aaron McLear, immediately sent out a press release to media outlets late Thursday afternoon quoting a respected black leader, Fredrick O. Murph, pastor of Brookins Community African Methodist Episcopal Church, as saying, "I firmly agree with the state's actions, and I appreciate the steps they are taking to communicate with and involve community leaders in these actions.

Murph's statement was a dramatic break from the months-long campaign by outspoken black leaders and activists who demanded that the hospital remain open. Supervisors Yvonne B. Burke, Gloria Molina, Zev Yaroslavsky, Don Knabe and Mike Antonovich have been increasingly criticized for acceding to those wishes even as patients continued to be put in danger and tragic incidents continued to be reported in the media.

WHEN 14-YEAR-OLD YESENIA PONCE wished her dad Happy Father's Day last Sunday, she could think only about how she might have lost him forever. "Ever since I was a little girl," she says, "I've dreamed of dancing the first dance with my dad at my quinceañera [coming-of-age party]. But when that whole thing happened at the hospital, I got really scared that he wasn't going to, you know, be there."

Her father's battle to get emergency treatment for a life-threatening brain tumor at Martin Luther King Jr.–Harbor Hospital in February set off multiple investigations after the L.A. Weekly began asking questions about why Ponce languished in the ER for four days, finally fleeing to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where doctors acted quickly to save his eyesight.

Now, Ponce's story (see L.A. Weekly, May 25–June 1, 2007), along with the Los Angeles Times–reported death of 43-year-old Edith Isabel Rodriguez, who died writhing in pain on the ER waiting-room floor, is at the eye of a political hurricane that threatens the survival of the beleaguered facility.

Yet another storm hit Tuesday with a report released by the Los Angeles County Health Services, citing a new investigation by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that found that MLK recently "failed to ensure the timely provision of emergency services for 17 out of 60 patients sampled." Statistically speaking, this means 28 percent of patients who walk through MLK's emergency-room doors on any given day could be met with what federal investigators described as a health-threatening "systematic failure."

The hospital was already on shaky legs after it failed a federal inspection in September that almost cost it $200 million in federal funding and its accreditation. Financial catastrophe was temporarily averted when county health chief Dr. Bruce Chernof promised the feds he would slash beds and staff and place MLK under the control of the respected Harbor-UCLA hospital.

In effect, MLK was to be rebuilt while remaining open. The county hired new managers, spent millions on consultants and — it was believed — reassigned most staff to other facilities while retraining the rest.

But then, the Ponce and Rodriguez incidents made headlines, and federal health officials conducted a brand-new multiday inspection. Their harshly worded report on June 7 slapped a federal citation on MLK for "deficiencies" in the Rodriguez death and stated that its staff's mishandling of Ponce and others shows that emergency-room patients at MLK face "imminent risk."

The feds gave MLK 23 days to get its act together or lose federal funding forever, a cliffhanger deadline that expires on June 30.

As the Weekly reported, Ponce on February 28 was taken by his brother to the emergency room because of headaches so excruciating he could barely walk. Doctors diagnosed acute obstructive hydrocephalus — a condition produced by a brain tumor that acted like a boulder blocking a river, causing a dangerous buildup of fluid in his cranial cavity.

MLK doctors told Ponce he needed immediate surgery to drain the fluid, but the drastically scaled-down MLK couldn't do it, so Ponce would be transferred. He was told not to eat, since surgery was all but imminent.

Instead, Ponce languished at MLK for four days, unable to get answers about his transfer or treatment even as his symptoms escalated: One side of his face went numb, he started vomiting intermittently, and he saw sparks of light in his field of vision. According to experts, his vision abnormalities were a red flag indicating that obstructive hydrocephalus was likely causing permanent damage, including blindness.

IT WAS THE TEENAGE YESENIA who indirectly saved her father. A ninth-grader at Animo Ralph Bunche Charter High School, where her teachers say she earns all A's and B's, Yesenia told a teacher about her dad's situation, and the teacher suggested involving Bunche's community-outreach coordinator, Abby Soto. With Soto's help, the family signed Ponce out against MLK doctors' advice and drove him to Harbor-UCLA, where he underwent surgery within hours. Since then, his eyesight has slowly returned to normal. His malignant tumor has required a second surgery and radiation.