Group recommends King/Drew oversight change
Consultants recommended transferring oversight of troubled
Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center from the county health
department to an independent board.
Navigant Consulting Inc. also said in a report Monday that the
hospital’s trauma unit, which is in the process of closing,
will not be able to reopen before July 2006. Navigant director Kae
Robertson also said there were problems at the hospital’s
outpatient clinics.
“It’s as broken there as it was on the inpatient
side,” Robertson said.
Navigant’s key recommendation was that the Board of
Supervisors immediately transfer responsibility for King/Drew to an
independent board of experts in finance, business and hospital
management. They would report directly to the supervisors,
bypassing the Department of Health Services.
County jails penalized for
“˜ineptitude’
A judge ordered the county to pay $54,000 for
“ineptitude” because it failed to turn over evidence
about jail inmates allegedly held in county jail beyond their
release dates.
Superior Court Judge Margaret Ann Nagle’s scathing ruling
and sanction was announced Monday as a civil trial began for W.E.
Green, who claimed he was detained for seven days after the parole
board ordered him freed.
In 2001, the county paid $27 million to settle five class action
suits claiming 400,000 inmates had been overdetained, were the
victims of mistaken identity or were illegally strip-searched.
Compiled from Bruin wire services.