[Updated at 10:45 a.m.: UC regents unanimously approved a partnership with L.A. County to reopen King Hospital.]
Members of the UC Board of Regents said they were “cautiously optimistic” that they would vote today to partner with Los Angeles County to reopen Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital.
King closed in 2007 after repeated findings that inadequate care at the facility led to patient injuries and deaths. Under the proposal the regents are scheduled to take up today, the county and the University of California would create a nonprofit entity to run the hospital, but the university would provide physician services and medical oversight.
“All of the regents are united in the moral imperative of this,” Sherry Lansing, who chairs the board’s committee on health services, said Wednesday. “But as you can see from today, we are facing financial difficulties.”
As she spoke, regents were voting to raise student fees as hundreds of students protested outside.
A partnership with the UC system is key to a plan to reopen the troubled hospital in South Los Angeles, but many hurdles would remain, including upward of $300 million in needed seismic repairs to the campus.
When the hospital shut down to in-patient and emergency services two years ago, county supervisors promised to have it operating again by this year. Earlier this month, county officials pushed back the reopening date again, this time to 2013. And the hospital they are planning to reopen will be considerably smaller, 120 beds instead of the 233 the facility once had.
John Stobo, senior vice president for health sciences and services for the UC system, said the agreement the regents are considering includes a promise from county officials to secure a $100-million letter of credit for six years, which will guarantee the $63 million a year it will cost to operate the hospital.
“That will go a long way toward addressing the regents’ concerns,” Stobo said.
Regent George Marcus, of the Palo Alto-based Marcus & Millichap Co. investment firm, had expressed doubts about the proposal’s financial stability. On Wednesday, Marcus said he was reassured by the hospital’s proposed nonprofit board structure, so that “if there’s a financial crisis, it doesn’t spill over to us, because we have our own financial crisis to deal with.”
Marcus said he expected the proposal to “sail through” today.