September 25, 2024
Willowbrook, CA – Governor Newsom signed budget bill AB 157 which will provide one time funding of $25 million for MLK Community Hospital (MLKCH). This funding is badly needed; it will help the hospital cover a significant shortfall due to caring for an overwhelming volume of patients in the emergency department. In addition, the Governor signed AB 177, which directs the Department of Health Care Services to develop a new payment methodology for MLK Community Hospital.
“We want to thank everyone who has worked on this issue for the past few years - Assembly member Mike Gipson and Senator Steve Bradford have been our champions in Sacramento and Supervisor Holly Mitchell has been our greatest asset here in Los Angeles,” said Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of MLK Community Hospital and health system. “We also want to thank Governor Newsom and his staff for ensuring this one-time funding and for working toward a longer-term funding solution for our hospital. Our challenges have been well documented. Our emergency department, which was initially projected to care for no more than 40,000 patients a year, saw well over 120,000 patients last year. These numbers are growing —and the costs are not sustainable. We look forward to working on an urgently needed solution to allow our hospital to continue providing the quality care this community deserves.”
The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board highlighted the issues facing MLKCH in a Nov. 21, 2023 editorial:
Martin Luther King Hospital is in jeopardy. This critical medical facility must get the funding it needs
Nov. 21, 2023
“…The problem is a funding structure that relies on supplemental payments from the state and the county but does not take inflation into account. The hospital is also a victim of its own irreplaceable role in the community….
MLK’s emergency department serves nearly four times as many patients — sometimes 400 a day — as the 110 daily visits expected when the hospital opened in 2015. The lack of reimbursements resulted in a loss of $42 million in the budget year that ended in June. “
Read the full editorial here