Martin Luther King Jr. Outpatient Center

The Martin Luther King Jr. Outpatient Center (MLK OC), formerly known as Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center (MLK-MACC), Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center (King/Drew) and later Martin Luther King Jr.–Harbor Hospital (MLK-Harbor or King–Harbor), is a public urgent care center and outpatient clinic in Willowbrook, an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County, California, north of the city of Compton and south of the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Founded as a major public hospital, it was shut down in August 2007 because of its poor record of patient care. The urgent care center and outpatient clinic, however, remain operating on the site. There are plans to reopen the facility in 2013 as a smaller hospital under a partnership between Los Angeles County and the University of California as a nonprofit organization governed by a seven-member board of directors.MLK Outpatient Center is operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS). In the 2000s (decade), widely publicized problems related to incompetence and mismanagement caused the hospital to undergo a radical overhaul which reduced the number of beds from 233 to 42 before it finally closed. Since 2004, 260 hospital staffers, including 41 doctors, had been fired or had resigned as a result of disciplinary proceedings. To alleviate the impact on the community of this large loss of capacity, The Los Angeles County Medical Alert Center (Felix: MAC) contracts ambulances take approximately 250 patients per month to other local hospitals.