Panel on hospital, ER closures formed

LOS ANGELES - Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez announced the creation Friday of a special legislative panel to respond to Los Angeles County's hospital and emergency room closures.

The Select Committee on the Los Angeles County Health Care Crisis is scheduled to convene next month and will be comprised of 12 state lawmakers, including its chairman, Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas, D-Los Angeles.

"Six hospitals in Los Angeles County shut their doors in 2004 alone," Nunez said in a statement. "The insured and uninsured alike will face a real disaster if the health care safety net begins to unravel. We must focus on this looming crisis and help make the county's health care system financially stable."

Since the 1980s, 10 trauma centers have shut down in the county, largely because of financial troubles from treating the indigent and the uninsured.

The committee will focus on causes of the financial and management problems and also listen to suggestions from health care officials.

Twenty-eight emergency rooms have closed statewide since 2000. Six were in Los Angeles County, including the 229-bed Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne, which had been open since 1926. The hospital closed last month.