KING-DREW DESERVES A CHANCE.

Byline: EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON

My sister had cancer surgery, and she lived. My nephew suffered a gunshot wound in the stomach, and he lived. A close friend had a serious infection, and he lived.

All three were treated at King-Drew hospital. All three received prompt and effective medical care. And all three were uninsured with nowhere else to go for treatment.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid say that the quality medical attention these patients received at King-Drew is the exception. The government has cited towering deficiencies in virtually every area of the hospital's operation, and it yanked the plug on the $200 million it shells out to the hospital annually.

This seemingly will mean King-Drew extinction.

The three patients I cite, though, are not exceptional, inasmuch as they are all uninsured. There are nearly 50 million uninsured people in the country, and thousands in L.A. County. Most are poor, black or Latino. King Hospital is the hospital of last resort for most of them.

And that's the problem.

King is a tragic example of a terribly flawed public hospital. But its flaws are a horrible sign of the problems that torment public hospitals everywhere.

The government is the nation's biggest health care provider. It foots the bill for 40 million elderly and disabled Americans (Medicare) and nearly 40 million poor (Medicaid). More government money is spent on health care than spent by several European nations combined.

The combination of Medicaid payment cutbacks, the wholesale shift of patients to community and public clinics to save dollars, and fierce competition from private hospitals resulted in a plunge in revenues for public hospitals. More public hospitals were shuttered, and those that stayed in business had a drastic decrease in the number of patients they served.

In the past 30 years, more than one-third of all public hospital beds have been lost. But during this same period, the number of uninsured has continued to soar.

King is a textbook example of the staggering numbers. The hospital provides sustained care for more than 10,000 patients, and it treats nearly 170,000 outpatients. That equals the population of a small city.

Without Medicaid funds, King -- like all other public hospitals -- wouldn't be able to keep its doors open a day.

So what should be done to save King? Simply padlocking the hospital would be a monumental disaster.

A year ago, UC researchers looked at hospital closures in L.A. County between 1997 and 2002. According to the study, the closures overwhelmed staff and facilities at the county's four general hospitals, including King. It triggered a stampede of patients to doctors' offices, clinics and emergency rooms. It increased the time and distance that patients had to travel.

That meant that fewer patients saw doctors, fewer children had checkups, and there was a jump in the number of deaths from injuries and heart attacks. These trends virtually guaranteed that the number of acute illnesses would climb, and such ailments are more costly to treat.

When public hospitals close, it's not just the poor who pay the price. Middle-income taxpayers also pay more in taxes to ramp up services at emergency and trauma centers to care for indigent patients.

But simply shouting to ``Save King'' means little if the hospital continues to put some patients in mortal danger. Fortunately, the U.S. Centers have tossed the county and King administrators a wafer-thin lifeline. Officials can appeal the decision to defund and/or apply for reinstatement. They should do both.

Yet the effort will be an empty exercise if officials don't eliminate the problems that got the hospital in a jam in the first place. That means ridding King-Drew of incompetent doctors, nurses and technicians; implementing a crash staff-retraining program and upgrading medical equipment.

King Hospital is the latest, but hardly the only casualty of a bloated health care system that has failed thousands of poor people in desperate need of care. The poor need and deserve another chance. King must clean up its act and give it to them.