Health IT, Hospitals

IT, culture helps reborn L.A. hospital shed ‘Killer King’ past

Five years in the making, the new MLK Community Hospital is spending upwards of $70 million on IT and is trying to instill a culture of accountability and safety.

By Neil Versel on October 19, 2015

Martin Luther King, Jr. Harbor Hospital (previously called King/Drew Medical Center), a public hospital in Los Angeles, closed in 2007 after serious patient safety problems earned it the unflattering nickname “Killer King” — and won the Los Angeles Times a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering all the mayhem.

The site, owned by Los Angeles County, sat vacant for years until the 131-bed, privately operated Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital opened in July in a brand-new building. Administrators know they have a tough road ahead of them to convince their South Los Angeles community that MLKCH is no “Killer King.”

Five years in the making, the new hospital is spending upwards of $70 million on IT and is trying to instill a culture of accountability and safety. “Our internal mantra is: ‘High quality, high touch, high tech,'” Chief Information and Innovation Officer Sajid Ahmed, said at last week’s College of Healthcare Information Management Executives Fall CIO Forum.

South L.A. is a medically underserved area with 1.2 million residents. Nearly two-thirds of patients are on Medi-Cal, California’s name for Medicaid, and only about 2 percent have commercial insurance, so MLKCH has to be efficient.

Showing the importance of IT and innovation, Ahmed was the second employee hired for the new safety-net hospital, after only the CEO. He joined in February 2013.

He said that the hospital is relying on mobility for clinicians, telehealth to extend access to care, connectivity to other providers for care coordination and apps to engage and educate patients. MLKCH also has a community learning center and an innovation hub.

“We think we’ve created a startup environment,” Ahmed said. This includes applying design principles into the culture and aligning people and processes with this culture. There can be no blaming one element for the failure of another, he explained. “Everyone needs to fit the culture, including vendors and consultants.”

MLKCH had to build a new facility from the ground up because the former main King/Drew building did not meet California’s tough seismic safety code. Only one building on the 42-acre campus, a trauma center, survived, and underwent a gut rehab, Ahmed said. Under construction are a medical office building, an urgent care center for mental health and a post-acute care building; all will be run by L.A. County.

Because the hospital had no patients until July, Ahmed and his IT team worked with clinical leaders to build workflows virtually. The hospital also launched a virtual transformational study and has issued a request for proposal on a platform to manage post-discharge care coordination. “We have an extreme focus on quality, safety, peer review and culture,” Ahmed said.