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• Article on King/Drew Medical Center Steering Committee
• California Breast Cancer Research Program
• Meharry Medical College
• East Bay Community Foundation
• Dr. Hopper featured on The Road to Health

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Tavis: Dr. Cornelius Hopper is Chairman of the Steering Committee on the Future of the King/Drew Medical Center here in Los Angeles. Recent troubles for King/Drew have been a major story here in Southern California. The medical center opened in 1965, following the Watts riots, in an effort to bring better medical care to inner-city Los Angeles. Dr. Hopper, nice to have you on the program.

Dr. Cornelius Hopper: Thank you.

Tavis: I want to talk about King/Drew, but I--Obviously, I want to talk in a larger context about the difficulty, the troubles that hospitals in inner cities across America are having and what this particular drama in Southern California is emblematic of. Let me start, though, for those who don't know much about the story of what's happened here in L.A., it's been a huge story here in Southern California around this particular story, relative to King/Drew, which serves a largely colored community of Latinos and African-Americans and other immigrants. Earlier this month, the hospital lost national accreditation because of a lapse in patient care. The federal government as we speak is threatening to cut off funds, about $200 million a year. I think it's fair to say with all due respect to the staff at the hospital, it is on the brink of closure due to a number of irregularities that have led, in some cases, as we know, to the death of certain patients. From your perspective, how tenuous is the situation as we speak, given that you chair this committee to save this hospital?

Hopper: I believe that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services that will make the decision about funding Medicare, which is the $200 million you speak of. I'm persuaded that the management firm that's currently managing the hospital will in fact pass that inspection, so that the funding will continue and the hospital will remain open. It must.

Tavis: It must, indeed, I think. We agree on that. Tell me how this management firm that you referenced came to run the hospital?

Hopper: After several problems over a period of time, the County Board of Supervisors finally decided that bringing in a major national firm was a necessity, because the problems were so deep and so broad that the usual kinds of responses were not satisfactory. The Navigant Company, which absorbed a major national firm called The Hunter Firm, which I'm familiar with from my previous role as Vice President of Health Affairs with the University of California, is outstanding. As you know, they have developed a set of 1,000 things that they found wrong, and they have a set of corrections that are in place at this point in time. What we've been doing, frankly, is consulting with them. We recommended to the Board of Supervisors back, in fact, in September that they bring in a firm like this. Much of our attention has been focused on the medical school and in fact, getting it in a position to be a good partner with the hospital in the future. This is a critically important set of organizations. As you mentioned, the Drew School got started a year after the riots. It was incorporated in 1969 with the sponsorship of UCLA, USC, and the Charles Drew Medical Society. So it is emblematic of what at that time was a predominantly black institution and black community. The King Hospital, because in people's minds they think of King-Drew as being the same institution, but the medical school is a small, private, historically black medical school. The hospital is a county-funded organization. What you're talking about is a partnership here that has been in place now for three decades and that has performed in many respects magnificently during that period of time. It has run into problems, but those problems can be solved and must be solved.

Tavis: Let me ask you, and I don't know that there's a simple answer to this, but let me ask you from your perspective what the primary reason or reasons are, what the primary source or sources are of the problems that this particular hospital has run into, because I suspect the problems they have had here locally, may be, to use your board, emblematic, of the same problems that other hospitals in inner cities are running into across the country. What are those problems?

Hopper: Well, yes and no. The problems here, I think, reflect the fact that the County Board of Supervisors, which is the governing body for all county hospitals--

Tavis: The governing political body.

Hopper: Well, it's the political governing body, but it's also technically speaking, it's the governing body that the joint commission looks to to oversee the hospital. They have never paid the kind of attention to this hospital that they have to Harbor, to Big County, to Olive View, and, in fact, it has been treated in many respects like a stepchild during these years. There was, I think, reluctance to step into what some might have regarded as a racially changed situation, but the bottom line is they did not provide the oversight that they should have. Secondly, the affiliation relationship between the county and the medical school has not been a true partnership. Dr. David Satcher, the former Surgeon General, in fact said this a year ago, that there isn't a true partnership. And so consequently, the fingers were pointing in different directions. Like the county says, Drew, you're responsible. Drew says to the county, you're responsible. But the actual responsibility wasn't being carried out. Consequently, you had unfortunate incidents in terms of bad patient care. And the thing that brought this to a head was that we lost accreditation for two major residency programs--in surgery and in radiology. That brought Dr. Satcher, and Dr. Satcher made a number of observations. It was a hard-hitting report that was very helpful. And since that time, all of us have been trying to get our hands around the solution for the future.

Tavis: Let me expand the conversation a little more broadly to the point I raised earlier. I happen to know, as you well do--you know more than I do, 'cause this is your area of expertise, but I travel the country, I read papers all across the country, and I know that this is a problem that inner city hospitals across the country are having. What are we to do when elected officials, you mentioned the Board of Supervisors. And I only mentioned governing political body to make it clear to our national audience that these are--the Board of Supervisors are made up of five people who are elected county-wide. These five persons run this facility. They oversee basically every facility in the county that falls under their jurisdiction. And so what happens when elected officials, to your point, don't have or exercise the kind of oversight that they should, and then long term, black and brown people and immigrants end up suffering because they now have to drive many, many miles away to be treated at other facilities? What do we do to turn the tide, to put a tourniquet, if you will, on this problem?

Hopper: I could give you a simplistic answer and say that the care of people in these kinds of communities needs to reach a higher state of priorities nationally. You know at this point in time that Medicaid is going to be cut. In this state it's going to be cut. To give the Board of Supervisors in this county some credit, they're having to deal and have had to deal with an extremely difficult budgetary situation. The pie, the amount of moneys available for them to do their job in terms of providing care for underserved populations has been shrinking. That's a different issue than whether or not, even with that smaller amount of money, they are able to give some parity and equity, in terms of hospitals like this one that are serving this kind of community. So I think that over time, it's a national priority. We're going to have to deal with the care of our poor.

Tavis: It is true, though, that of the five members on this county board in L.A., that there is at least one brown member and one black member on the board.

Hopper: Yes.

Tavis: There are some, though, who take a different view of this. Let me offer the other side of this argument or this equation, if you will. There are some who argue that it really is not the primary fault of the elected officials, that this hospital and other hospitals around the country in inner cities are running into these problems. That it is first and foremost the responsibility of the folk who run these institutions, and so that when you have blacks and browns and others who run these institutions and the institutions are not run well, it's easy to then turn around and point the finger at the elected officials when in fact, the folk running the institutions, oftentimes black and brown, didn't do such a good job.

Hopper: I'm going to use a favorite expression from my childhood: that's a cop-out. Because if the County Board of Supervisors is in fact responsible for the quality of the administrators in these hospitals-- they hire them, they fire them, they credential the physicians, they hire the nurses, they hire the pharmacists. Ultimately, that buck has got to stop there.

Tavis: What happens--what best advise do you have then to folk in these communities who are trying to, certainly here in L.A. and other parts around the country, trying to rally to save these institutions?

Hopper: I think first of all, in these communities, the people have got to start to understand what is good health care and demand it. I think in this situation, in south central Los Angeles, when patients have run into the kind of problems they have at the King/Drew Medical Center, the community organization should be saying we demand the same quality of care for our patients and community that they're receiving at Harbor, that they're receiving at Big County, that they're receiving at outstanding county hospitals. So you have to have an educated population and one that's willing to deal with this in a different way than simply saying we want to keep open the black institutions. That's very important. This is an institution that is not only historically black, but it's a Hispanic-serving institution as well. But those communities have to come together and say, we demand good care.

Tavis: I guess at the end of the day, if there are, in fact, other county hospitals that are run by these same elected officials that run well, the argument can't be made that it can't be done, that it can't be run well.

Hopper: You're making my point.

Tavis: Well, on that note, I'll stop talking, then. Nice to see you, Doctor. I don't need to talk any more if I'm starting to make somebody else's point. I'm glad to have you on. Up next on this program, game show legend--I teased you and offered a joke a couple weeks ago on this program about people I meet on airplane. I should just start doing shows of folk I meet on airplane. So guess who I met on a plane the other day? Bob Eubanks. I used to love the "Newlywed Game." He's on the show in just a moment. Stay with us.