The Los Angeles County Medical Association and an evolving list of about 10 partner groups are working to find alternative primary- and specialty-care options for South Los Angeles residents, whose limited access to healthcare was further stressed by the August closure of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital.

"The goal really is to bring all of the key partners to the table--the stakeholders in South Los Angeles," says Nina Vaccaro, director of the Southside Coalition of Community Health Centers, a network of nonprofit clinics organized to improve care for the area's underserved.

The South Los Angeles Corridor Health Safety Net Collaborative (SLAC-HSNC) is studying the implications of extending the hours of operation at existing South Los Angeles clinics, as well as the possibility of creating new clinics, perhaps connected to area schools or transit hubs. By later this month, the group also hopes to fund some of its efforts with grants from private groups.

While the hospital's closure didn't necessarily eliminate primary- and specialty-care services in South Los Angeles, it worsens the situation because residents often used the hospital ER for these services. "[Expanding the area's options] is something that needed to have happened regardless of whether MLK closed or remained open," Vaccaro says. "There's a tremendous lack of services with primary care and specialty care in South Los Angeles."

The SLAC-HSNC membership is in a state of flux, but in addition to LACMA and the Southside Coalition, an August meeting included representatives from Los Angeles Councilwoman Jan Perry's office, White Memorial Medical Center, medical network managers LatinoCare Management, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, health-policy advocate LA Health Action, St. Francis Medical Center, public affairs firm GCG Rose & Kindel, and health-policy advocate Community Health Councils.

MLK-Harbor closed in mid-August immediately after inspectors from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that it failed a survey and was not eligible to continue receiving $200 million in annual federal funding. The former hospital, which served about 45,000 patients annually, is now a multiservice ambulatory care facility with about 70 clinics and an urgent care center, says Maeve McConnell, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Ambulances now route emergency patients to nine area hospitals instead of MLK-Harbor.

The Los Angeles County DHS plans to reopen MLK-Harbor with the help of a private operator or through an arrangement with the county. In the meantime, DHS is also informing South Los Angeles residents within a 10-mile radius of the hospital that they can still use its non-emergency services, McConnell says. "[Residents] got the idea that all of the services were shut down," she says. So, within a week of the hospital closure, DHS began a $294,000 bilingual outreach campaign that included 485 radio spots, 12 newspaper ads, direct mail announcements and about 2,000 bus and bus-stop signs, she says.