New supervisor vows to reopen troubled King-Harbor hospital

Newly-elected Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas is scheduled to take his oath of office in a ceremony at the county building this afternoon -- and reopening a troubled hospital is at the top of his agenda.

On Tuesday morning, he plans to be outside Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Willowbrook to announce a series of benchmarks he says are key to reopening the medical facility by January 2010.

Over lunch on Sunday at a vegan restaurant in Inglewood, Ridley-Thomas told The Times' Molly Hennessy-Fiske, who covers county government, that he still is working out the details of his plan. Ridley-Thomas said that during his tough campaign this fall against Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks, residents of the second district made it clear that reopening King hospital is a priority.

"I don't know how you can cause people to believe you are serious about a matter without benchmarks," Ridley-Thomas said. "We're not just talking about the Southeast, we're talking about the entirety of the county and the safety net," he said. "The matter is increasingly urgent because of the lack of access to care" and "the debilitative impact this has had on hospitals in the surrounding communities. They've had to carry the load."

Federal regulators forced the hospital to shut down last year after it failed to meet minimum standards for patient care, and the county downsized the facility, maintaining only clinic services. For the last year, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has been trying to broker a deal between the county and the University of California to operate the hospital.

Retiring Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, who Ridley-Thomas replaces, considered reopening the hospital a priority, but made little progress in her final term. It remains to be seen if Ridley-Thomas can fulfill his promise to "jumpstart the process" of reopening the hospital. He said he believes his plan will be workable whether or not the University of California agrees to partner with the county to run the hospital.

"The process has to move forward regardless of who the operator is," Ridley-Thomas said. "We can ill afford a posture of wait and see. Our job is to deliver a hospital all of us can be proud of again." He is scheduled to appear at the hospital at 8 a.m. and go on from there to his first Board of Supervisors meeting.

Ridley-Thomas said that at Tuesday's board meeting he will introduce a motion to present the plan and also move that it be discussed the following week.

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times