<div id="subtitle">LA County supervisors approve pact with university to restore hospital services to inner city</div><div><p>County supervisors on Tuesday approved a deal to create a new Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center on the site of an aging inner-city hospital that closed in 2007 after patient deaths blamed on shoddy care.</p><p>The Board of Supervisors unanimously ratified an agreement with the University of California to reopen a hospital to serve hundreds of thousands of people in the Watts-Willowbrook area, low-income communities in the South Los Angeles region.</p><p>However, reopening the hospital "is not a matter that exclusively benefits one community," said Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. "This is effectively a reinforcement, (an) undergirding of the county's safety net."</p><p>The plan is for a nonprofit, 120-bed facility to open in late 2012, followed by an emergency department the next year and an ambulatory care center in 2014.</p><p>While agreement details and costs remain to be worked out, the county is expected to cover construction costs that could run well over $300 million. The University of California, whose regents approved a "key-elements" agreement on Nov. 19, would provide the doctors and run a medical training program.</p><p>A nonprofit organization overseen by an independent board would run the hospital under a county lease.</p><p>The original county-run hospital, built after the 1965 Watts riot, was closed in 2007 after repeatedly failing federal inspections that exposed life-threatening problems.</p><p>Only a county walk-in clinic still operates there.</p><p>The hospital, known as King-Drew and later as King-Harbor, came under intense scrutiny when a woman with a perforated bowel died in May 2007 after lying in pain on the floor of the emergency room as staff ignored her.</p><p>The county made repeated efforts to improve the hospital. New management was brought in, the number of inpatient beds was reduced and the emergency room was closed.</p><p>Since the closure, local hospitals have been flooded with the estimated 50,000 patients a year who used to visit King's emergency room.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=64565808&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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