King-Drew Update

The once-steadfast promise to reopen Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center by February 2009 has given way in recent weeks to the bleak prediction among some officials that it could be years before the linchpin in south Los Angeles County healthcare is resurrected.

Supervisor Gloria Molina is the most vocal about her doubts. According to the way the Department of Health Services is moving, “it will not happen in my lifetime,” she recently told The Times.

Others make similar assessments in private, a startling contrast with the optimistic position that county supervisors had previously maintained — that the hospital, in Willowbrook south of Watts, would reopen soon.

Health services director Dr. Bruce A. Chernof, retiring Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke and others still say the hospital could reopen before long. And the future of King is a prominent issue in the current race to replace Burke. But among county officials and hospital-industry insiders, the path forward is more often seen to be littered with obstacles that are increasing:

* The county is facing broad challenges in its health services department that are some of the most difficult this decade: an oncoming budget deficit expected to exceed $1 billion within three years and a vacancy in the department’s top post.

* The hospital industry across Southern California is facing economic difficulties.

* King, in particular, has been troubled for years by problems with patient care, finally prompting the federal government to pull its funding, forcing its closure last summer.

The facility served neighborhoods with some of the sickest and poorest people in the county.

* The county’s own complex bureaucracy has been blamed for hindering the search for a new operator.