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Before it was recently closed, Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital was a public hospital in Los Angeles, CA that was run by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. For a while, there had been widely discussed problems related to endemic incompetence and mismanagement, which ultimately caused the available number of hospital beds to be decreased to only 42. In the past three years, over 200 hospital employees had either been terminated or resigned for disciplinary reasons.
In 2000, before its crisis and closing, the hospital possessed 537 beds and was the teaching hospital for Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. Located near high crime areas, the hospital had a very involved trauma unit. During 2003, it treated over 2,000 gunshot wounds and other such life-threatening injuries.
Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital's establishment was due to the 1965 Watts Riots when it was determined that poor access to adequate healthcare was one of the contributing factors to the unrest. Tellingly, the closest public trauma center was located over ten miles away.
In 1966, a medical task force was formed to examine the matter. Actual construction began in April 1968. It opened in 1972 as a full-service medical center and was viewed as a source of pride and jobs in the community.
Despite this excellent start, after 2000 an array of problems rocked the hospital. It was known by the dubious nickname of 'Killer King' and was the object of a number of special investigations by local newspapers.
On August 10, after failing a comprehensive review by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 200 million dollars in federal funding was canceled. The emergency room was closed later that day and the rest of the hospital by August 27. Employees were reassigned to jobs at other county facilities.
At a later Los Angeles County board meeting, a 124-page report by federal inspectors was revealed that detailed dozens of errors and failures by hospital employees during the fateful review.