It drips off their tongues like some vulgar, four-letter word. In the minds of union activists it’s every bit as derogatory as the “n-word.” The phrase is “for profit.”
This was at the heart of the recent labor dispute between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and two Las Vegas “for profit” hospitals. In the eyes of the SEIU the only good hospital is a government-owned/union-run hospital. You know, like the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles.
You haven’t heard about King/Drew? You might want to sit down.
King/Drew was a government-owned/SEIU-represented public hospital which, according to a December 2004 Los Angles Times story, “had a long history of harming, or even killing, those it was meant to serve.” The Times highlighted various reports of the quality of care provided by this public hospital: “Nurses neglecting patients as they lay dying. Staff failing to give patients crucial drugs or giving them toxic ones by mistake. Guards using Taser stun guns on psychiatric patients, despite an earlier warning to stop.”
That’s not all: “Entire departments are riddled with incompetence, internal strife and, in some cases, criminality. Employees have pilfered and sometimes sold the hospital’s drugs; chronic absenteeism is rampant; assaults between hospital workers are not uncommon.”
Things were so bad at this government-owned/union-run hospital that “Patients have fled ambulances to avoid it” and “police officers say they have an understanding among themselves that, if shot, they will not be taken there.” All of which earned this public hospital the nickname “Killer King.”
The Times concluded that “The number of patients harmed or killed at King/Drew is impossible to tally.”
A follow-up report last October noted that “Staffers have been at the heart of King/Drew’s problems,” including the fact that 650 workers had been disciplined in less than a year “for such lapses as sleeping on the job, turning down alarms on patient monitors and making fatal medical errors.” One consultant observed that some employees appeared to have “retired in place.”
But when the heat finally got turned up enough to force the local government to do something about this intolerable situation, the SEIU objected to its union members being reassigned or transferred out of “Killer King” hospital. “I haven’t ever heard of involuntary transfers in 10 years,” said SEIU Local 660 representative Kathy Ochoa. “Workers at King/Drew can be assured that they definitely have rights in any of these scenarios.”
No matter how many patients they kill in the process, I assume.
Is this a worst-case scenario of what happens when the government owns and the union runs a hospital? Of course. But as the SEIU in Las Vegas continues to demonize private “for profit” hospitals, it’s instructive to note that there’s a lot more to providing quality care at a medical facility than simple nurse-to-patient ratios. And yes, providing such care within a budget is indeed a concern. Just ask Clark County commissioners, whose own public hospital, UMC, is bleeding red ink by the bucket-load.
If the SEIU wants to set hospital operating policies and staffing levels, then by all means, they should open up their own competing medical facility. Otherwise, let the nurses do their jobs, leave management to the managers, and stop trying to bring Killer King-type hospital care to Nevada.
Posted on February 15th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
As usual, another brilliant piece of writing! Keep up the great work!
You are an ignorant fool.
II used to work at King. I am still proud of having worked at King. I am not surprised that all people know of King is what Charlie Ornstein built his career on: taking down medical services, imagining to be the knight in shining armor, saving the populace from bad medical care. But I’m still grieving over it. I don’t follow blogs, and I am just happening upon your piece - but I could not just ignore it.
It was very difficult to discipline King employees - because hardly any of the cases found were actual malpractice. Nurses do not monitor - in your or my hospital - a dying patient with a terminal condition. You turn off the monitors, let the family hold his or her hand. Nurses transferred to other county hospitals have discovered that the unreal array of restrictions, prohibitions, rules and regulations that they were all subject to at King are ignored, not existing, or ridiculed elsewhere. The severity of illness of the King patients way surpasses the standards of what even the other Big County hospital is accustomed to.
They tore us down starting from the flagship, the trauma center. The Board of Supervisors will forever pay millions to have trauma care done by other hospitals - private ones - where the same King doctors and therapists are welcome part of the regular staff - but in facilities that are neither as modern or as functional as the 1998 King center had been. The attack on the Neonatal ICU was unrelenting and eventually succeeded: the best run unit in the whole County , the one at the center of the need. Pretty much only high risk obstetrical patients used to show up at King’s door, and both quality of care and survival rates still were comparable or superior to any private hospital. Compassionate care, and incredible specialized follow up for its patients, too. We used to have fifteen training programs whose graduates consistently chose to remain and serve in the inner city, gone now. Cui prodest, used to wonder the ancient Romans, to whose advantage is this catastrophe?
Did King have mistakes ? Yes, and so do the hospitals around the country where 80,000-some patients are known to die every year, because medicine is not an exact science, because humans err, because people get exhausted or distracted or whatever, and because the human body is fragile. They happen in any hospital, at any time. Most hospitals, however, do not invite Charlie Ornstein in, like the LA County Health Dept has repeatedly done. If anything, damage control is a science.
Poor administration? yes, plenty. We all know that the downtown little kings and queens - the Supes, the largest bureaucracy in the western US - chose to place a glorified clerk with a late BA and no medical background as head of a department with 5 major hospitals, a 4 billion dollar budget, and the largest population of insured patients known… 2.8 million people in LA have no coverage and go to public facilities. There are 23 states in the US whose TOTAL population is smaller than that. And later chose to hire MDs to do the same, such as the one responsible for downsizing the VA system - very proud of it, Uncle Tom was, and read now the news about the veterans’ dismal care!!!!, and then fire him furiously, after humiliating him in public over and over, just as they had done in the past to other colleagues…
People around King are now bemoaning the fact that they get transferred elsewhere, that there is no pediatric unit, that premature or sick infants don’t stay here any more. Are you aware that there are times when in LA you wouldn’t have an intensive care bed for your child if needed? Why close our PICU unit, the option for trauma care for kids in the area where you can get a bullet though your head while sitting in your kitchen? Do you know how many hospitals have closed their doors to emergency cases, to trauma, to high risk deliveries? You may indeed find out in an unpleasant way one day, and I wish you well.
The area of highest need has been intentionally reduced to an inner city ghetto no better, actually much worse than before the 1965 riots. Easy: the locals now are not angry young black men, but immigrant families afraid of complaining. Slam dunk, now you can either clean up the area, sell the renovated hospital, or both.
I am so sorry. I am now far away, and miss LA - but miss my people, my team, my patients more. What is lost won’t be recovered. The care of the indigent is not a high priority, the political cover ups are a daily reality in the life of the country. The unions? Kathy Ochoa was indeed at the table, trying to restore some common sense, and trying to support her nurses in the witch hunt of these years. She is worthy of respect, and, no, she never covered up for willful misconduct. She didn’t have to. Good luck, LA, and hope for the best. Maybe California is ready for a single payer experiment.
Lovely, informative site, thanks