Last summer, officials at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles made a decision: If they didn’t start yelling for help, their facility was headed for a total shutdown.
In the abstract, the problem seemed to make no sense. How could this hospital be in trouble? Not only is MLK (as locals often call it) a newer facility with consecutive five-star ratings from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, but it also fills a desperate need in a federally certified health care desert and practically overflows with patients.
