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California moves against troubled L.A. hospital
LOS ANGELES — State health regulators said last week they would move to revoke the license of a hospital where a patient recently died on the emergency room floor while waiting for treatment.
The California Department of Health Services said in a letter to Los Angeles County officials that it was beginning the process to terminate the license for Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital.
While the public hospital could not operate without a license, the process could take many months and is subject to appeal.
The move was part of a growing chorus of government agencies targeting the facility, which has a long history of providing substandard care to inner-city patients.
Sandra Shewry, director of the state health agency, said the goal is to improve the quality of King-Harbor’s care, not close the facility. She said the agency’s move comes as a response “to the egregious incidents that have come to light in the last six weeks.”
“We hope this will be the final rallying cry where the hospital and the county will make that push to improve patient care,” Shewry said.
Last month, a woman died after writhing untreated for 45 minutes on the floor of the emergency room lobby. In February, a brain tumor patient allegedly languished in the ER for four days before his family drove him to another hospital for emergency surgery.
Dr. Bruce Chernof, director the county’s health agency, stressed that King-Harbor would continue to operate.
“What this does not mean is that the state is pulling the license immediately and the hospital will close,” Chernof said.
The federal government has threatened to pull Medicare and Medi-Cal funding, and an upcoming inspection could decide the matter. The county Board of Supervisors has also sharply criticized health officials about conditions at the hospital, and ordered them to come up with a contingency plan should it be closed.
King-Harbor was built several years after the 1965 Watts riot to bring health care to poor, minority communities in South Los Angeles.
Man jailed by mistake settles with Maryland county
UPPER MARLBORO, Md. — A Virginia man jailed for nearly three weeks after a police detective mistakenly named him in an arrest warrant will receive $215,000 from the settlement of a federal civil lawsuit.
The problems began when Daniel Anthony Miller, 39, of Spotsylvania County, Va., was stopped in May 2004 by a Virginia State Trooper for not having a front tag on his vehicle.
A computer check showed that Miller, who is black, was wanted for stealing a lawn mower in Clinton, Md., in July 2002, so the trooper arrested him.
But the Prince George’s County detective who obtained the arrest warrant named the wrong man. The actual suspect, with a similar name, was white and more than 15 years younger.
Miller was locked up for 19 days before his attorney convinced a Prince George’s prosecutor that he was innocent. The prosecutor had the charges dropped, and Miller was released.
Miller said last week that he was not satisfied with the settlement. He noted that by the time he filed his lawsuit, John Dougans, the detective who obtained the erroneous arrest warrant, had retired.
No one from the county or the police department has ever apologized to Miller.
“If they make a mistake, they won’t admit to it,” he said.
Associate County Attorney Raj Kumar, who defended Dougans and the county, declined to comment, other than to say the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing.
In court papers, Kumar argued that Dougans knew his suspect was white and that the arrest of Miller was caused by a computer database error.
Miller’s civil attorney, Terrell N. Roberts III, said it is “mystifying” that the detective never confirmed the identity of the person he named in the warrant by showing his photograph to the victims.
“They knew the culprit and would have exonerated my client,” Roberts said.
Historical society will not allow demolition of school from U.S. desegregation case
TOPEKA, Kan. — The Kansas State Historical Society says it will not allow city officials to demolish the former all-white school that was at the center of a court case that paved the way toward ending racial segregation in American schools.
The Topeka City Council had given preliminary approval this week to begin the destruction, but the state’s historical society contends that a 2002 agreement requires the city to preserve the structure until 2012.
To change the building’s architectural appearance and structural integrity, the city needs the historical society’s permission, said Patrick Zollner, the state agency’s director of historic preservation.
The covenant, signed by then-Topeka Mayor Butch Felker in 2002, can be amended or released only by mutual written agreement.
“The society would never consent to the demolition of Sumner School,” Zollner told The Topeka Capital-Journal last Thursday.
Council and city staff members have said they would like to save the Sumner Elementary School building, but the cost to the city has forced them to consider other options.
The art deco building became a symbol of civil rights history when Oliver Brown, a black minister, tried to enroll his daughter in Sumner School in 1950.
When the school turned them away, the Browns filed a lawsuit that would eventually lead to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 desegregation decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case.
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