Board Votes $10 Million for Hospital Equipment

Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday moved to shore up county hospital emergency rooms and trauma centers by approving the purchase of $10 million in medical equipment, ranging from stretchers to a $400,000 blood chemistry analyzer.

The allocation is designed to strengthen county hospitals at a time when private hospitals are threatening to downgrade their emergency room licenses and refuse to accept public rescue ambulances. Such a move would force county hospitals to shoulder more than a 30% increase in ambulance traffic.

Equipment purchases approved by the supervisors for Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Watts total about $4.6 million--almost double last year’s allocation.

The money was appropriated after the hospital’s medical director, James Haughton, called attention this summer to the facility’s aging equipment. He asserted that operating microscopes used by doctors during brain surgery are so old that they commonly fall apart in the middle of an operation, and that a single defibrillator is available to treat heart patients in the busy emergency room.

The supervisors set aside money Tuesday to purchase new equipment at five county hospitals, including King, and two comprehensive health clinics.

Equipment purchases at County-USC Medical Center in East Los Angeles will total $4.3 million, including $1 million for 32 new monitors that electronically track the vital signs of seriously ill patients.

The supervisors also ordered replacement of 25 aging ambulances and approved the purchase of 11 patient-transportation vans. The vehicles will cost about $1.3 million and will be paid for separately from the hospital equipment.