The financial threat facing Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Healthcare has been reduced, thanks to state supplemental funding secured after local elected officials sounded the alarm of a possible closure, which would have negatively impacted residents throughout South L.A. and surrounding neighborhoods.
The hospital’s executive leadership along with local elected officials gathered at the MLK Community Hospital on July 5 to celebrate the support that helped secure a commitment of $25 million in the California state budget signed last month by Governor Gavin Newsom.
Assemblymember Mike Gipson, State Senator Steve Bradford, and Supervisor Holly Mitchell were recognized for their legislative efforts by health system CEO Dr. Elaine Batchlor, hospital staff members, doctors and nurses, patients, and community leaders.
The County Board of Supervisors committed funding in January before Gipson, Bradford and Mitchell advocated at the state level to secure $25 million in the state budget as a temporary measure. This maintains operations while lawmakers seek a sustainable solution.
Funding ensures the hospital will at least remain open for the current fiscal year; however, the community hospital remains in a vulnerable financial position, facing potential insolvency when bridge funding from state and county sources is depleted.
Dr. Batchlor honored and thanked the three elected officials for their efforts as champions.
“You took the baton in a year everyone said was just too hard. You brought support and funding from the county. You carried a request to the state on our behalf in the face of a budget deficit. And when the state suggested a lower amount, you said, that’s not enough,” said Batchlor, who described the monetary victory as a hard-fought milestone that could not have been achieved without their support on behalf of MLKCH.
Last month, she co-authored a new federal report exposing little progress towards health care equity titled, “Ending Unequal Treatment: Strategies to Achieve Equitable Health Care and Optimal Health for All,” from the National Academy of Medicine stating it is time to turn data into action.
The report found that the nation’s current health care system, by its very design, delivers different outcomes for different populations and is highly influenced by external societal forces inextricably linked to disparate individual and population outcomes. According to Batchlor,
the United States must renew its commitment to ending health care inequity and specifically to eliminating the structural obstacles to care than many disadvantaged communities still face.
“The recommendations in unequal treatment address how we can achieve healthcare equity across the nation. They carry a sense of urgency. I want you to know we feel that urgency in our work here at MLKCH in South LA. Our hospital is not at the finish line. We have critical work ahead to ensure that MLKCH will survive and thrive. Now we have the support to give us confidence,” she concluded.
In November 2023, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed Mitchell’s motion directing the County’s Chief Executive Office (CEO) and the Department of Health Services to identify options to help financially stabilize MLKCH’s operations. The CEO identified various relief options that would have no net County cost, including using unallocated Measure B funding.
In January, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion authored by Mitchell that invested a total of $20 million dollars of Los Angeles County’s unallocated Measure B funding over the next four years to help support the hospital’s operational needs. The motion authorized the County’s Department of Health Services to allocate $8 million in one-time Measure B funding to be released to MLKCH and an additional $4 million up until the fiscal year 2026-2027.
Mitchell, being the first African American to serve as chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, persuaded her former colleagues in the state’s legislature on the hospital’s importance and critical need for fiscal stability.
“We have not talked enough about this hospital’s future. The future is also recognizing the new players who have come on the scene and are locking arms,” she said while being honored.
“It’s a new generation of people in positions of power and authority that we have to bring into the fold to honor and recognize the history. We are going to work to introduce them to the amazing work [MLKCH] is doing every day so they can continue to lock arms with me, my colleagues and former colleagues in the legislature to make sure the future is as bright as the past that brought us here.”
MLKCH serves a patient population that faces disproportionately high chronic illness and unmet needs. Before it was built, the County projected that the MLKCH emergency room would receive roughly 25,000 to 30,000 visits a year. Last year alone, the hospital had 100,000 emergency room visits.
MLKCH reported that nearly all the patients visiting the emergency room are covered by Medi-Cal, but current Medi-Cal rates do not compensate the hospital for the actual cost of care. The hospital estimates that it will run out of funding in December 2024 and is seeking other state and federal funding options.
The hospital continues to meet the high demand with excellence in service. MLKCH has earned a rare 5-star rating from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for two years in a row and recently earned an “A’ from Leapfrog – an independent national non-profit that measures quality and patient safety.
The funding for MLKCH was also contained in SB 108 (Wiener), one of the state’s budget bills. The Director of Finance can increase funding for the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital by up to $25 million, including federal matching funds, if the Legislature passes a law allowing it. Any increase must be approved 30 days after notifying the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.
Critical work is ongoing by legislators and leaders to ensure a more permanent solution for the hospital’s future. Legislative supporters continued to point out that the process for structural changes is a marathon, not a sprint suggesting more work is needed to close the funding methodology loophole required to sustain the hospital for future generations.
