Dive Brief:
- Eight years ago, King/Drew Hospital in Los Angeles finally closed its doors.
- The hospital was forced to close after it failed several inspections and staff errors led to patient deaths.
- Last week, a new hospital, called the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital, opened in place of the old one.
Dive Insight:
In 2007, King/Drew Hospital lost its federal funding and county officials voted to shut the hospital down. But almost immediately, talks began to reopen it. The original plan was for the hospital to reopen in 2009, but a struggle to find funding kept pushing back the reopening.
County officials eventually came up with a viable plan. The county put up the money to rebuild, as well as $68 million in annual support. An independent, nonprofit organization will run the hospital, which will be staffed, in part, by the University of California.
Although the new hospital is only about one-third the size of the old one, it's part of a campus that also includes an outpatient clinic, an urgent-care psychiatric center and a public health clinic.