LA hospital's emergency room to close Monday

AP ^

[SmithL]

LOS ANGELES -- A hospital emergency room whose doctors see an average of 80 patients a day is closing Monday because of a shortage of on-call surgeons and specialty physicians, hospital officials announced.

The emergency room closure at Northridge Hospital Medical Center's Sherman Way campus was ordered by the county Department of Health Services. It comes on the heels of last month's vote by the county Board of Supervisors to begin a process expected to result in the closing of the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in South Los Angeles.

"There is a severe health care crisis in California, and we're just in the eye of the storm," said Jeff Conway, president of Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

[SmithL]

Wky are they losing $1,000,000 per MONTH?

[Egon]

It's Bush's fault. ...and Arnie's.

[Freepdonia]

Don't forget Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Hailburton and Roger Stone!

[MarlboroRed]

As is the case for any slum hospital, because none of their patients pay, the administration is run by a bunch of incompetents, frauds and crooks, and no doctor with a choice would want to be there.

[Eddie Haskell]

I'll give you a clue: it's initials are I.A.

[coop223]

2 words: illegal aliens

[Anti-Bubba182]

"..Officials say the hospital is losing more than $1 million a month because of the number of uninsured patients it sees and the low reimbursement rate it receives for treating poor people..."

[Mr. Rips]

Hardest hit by the Northridge closure will be poor and uninsured people who visit the emergency room for routine medical care because they don't have doctors, said City Councilman Tony Cardenas, whose district is served by the hospital.

Maybe, just maybe, this is why they are losing a million large every month. Then again I'm no esteemed councilman.

[jrushing]

Democrats

[dufekin]

Don't forget this: after not paying their bills, the patients sue the hospital for almost anything any trial lawyer can dream. For example, after one local hospital paid the bills of its patients, those same patients--absolved of their debts--sued the hospital for charging them too much. So the hospital is supposed to pay patients for using their services?

And now onward to malpractice lawyers. These greedy, godless goons can channel the spirits of the deceased to entice scientifically ignorant juries into agreeing to their self-enriching schemes based fundamentally upon disproven junk science.

[Walkingfeather]

This hospitals ER should have been shut down years ago, My friend worked in the ER there for a few days and she was shocked by the incompetence and malpractice. She quit. Only politics have kept it open.

[TNdandelion]

"Hardest hit by the Northridge closure will be poor and uninsured people who visit the emergency room for routine medical care because they don't have doctors,"

Yeah...no more free medical care for them because they broke the bank.

[MarlboroRed]

It's the same story all over. When racial politics trumps economic realities, the result will be a disaster. Another tragic example, although not in the US, of this is what happened to South African airlines--went from the best in the world under the evil apartheid regime to the worst run.

And of course the people who suffer most are the people forced to use the services of these horror stories, which in the case of LA will be the same minorities that their "leaders" are proclaiming to protect.

[politicalwit]

"The emergency medical system is falling apart before our eyes," said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky."

Imagine the number of one way bus tickets to Mexico a million dollars a month could purchase.

[wingnuts'nbolts]

That ought to bring out the angry socialists. The timing is very suspicious.

[searchandrecovery]

Why don't they just raise taxes? Duh. Someone has to pay for illegal alien healthcare, and it ain't them. Hello.

[Brellium]

Wow, they killed the tramacenter at Killer-King?

[A CA Guy]

Illegals.

[Old Professer]

10 years ago, a JCOAH rep told me that MLKjr/DMC had been operating on provisional accreditation for as long as he had ben assigned to the area; they serve a near-100% minority poverty-status clientele, many newly arrived Hispanic late-term pregnancy women patients.

A real-life St. Elsewhere.

[Walkingfeather]

bulls eye