'Because hospitals are these large buildings, people tend to equate health with hospitals when, in fact, you go to a hospital when you're not healthy.' County's Department of Health Services and oversaw the reimagining and rebuilding of the new hospital.

'Hospitals are actually a very small part of the solution for health in most communities,' said Mitch Katz, an internist who heads L.A. Instead, itвЂ™s a wellness network with a small hospital at the center, providing critical care for the small number of acute illnesses and injuries that canвЂ™t be addressed in any other setting. In fact, in many ways, the hospital of the future is an un-hospital. Juan Cabrales, a family practice specialist with the hospitalвЂ™s new medical group and discharge clinic located in a strip mall in nearby Compton. BOTTOM LEFT: Patient Allan Avant, 58, who suffers from high blood pressure, has been treated by Dr. BOTTOM RIGHT: David Dirig, the hospitalвЂ™s pharmacy director, explains the new innovative house-wide medication management systems that he helped implement from the ground up. Community Hospital, which opened its doors to South Los Angeles in 2015. TOP RIGHT: Visitors of a family member who is a patient wait outside the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Elaine Batchlor, the medical centerвЂ™s chief executive officer, shows off various high-tech features of the hospitalвЂ™s private rooms. Meanwhile, the hospital is working to provide more outpatient services outside its walls and to support the county in revitalizing the community. The county is creating new senior housing and additional services, working with the hospital to bring healthier food options and even more jobs to the area. The hospital is just one part of a larger system to improve the lives and protect the health of its residents-a system that extends well beyond medical care. The hospital itself focuses instead on acute-care and highly specialized services for a smaller but sicker group of patients.Д«ut perhaps the biggest difference is the vision.

Instead of being the sole source of a whole areaвЂ™s medical needs, the new hospital is designed as the hub of a wide network of clinics, neighborhood outposts designed to provide the day-to-day care residents need. Community Hospital is a nearly $300 million medical center that shares the same county-owned grounds as the old hospital, but little else.ДЇor one thing, the new hospital is much smaller, with just 131 beds compared with the old hospital's 233 beds.

The new private, nonprofit Martin Luther King Jr. And to do that, they would have to rethink the very concept of what a hospital is and what it does. So when a group of community leaders and elected officials started to plan for KingвЂ™s replacement, they did something bold: Instead of even considering fixing up the old hospital, they decided to start fresh and build a new one. Its closure effectively left one of the cityвЂ™s most vulnerable communities without access to health care. Its emergency department had been the place mothers went to deliver babies, children were brought if they had high fevers and gunshot victims were sewn up. Though King/Drew ultimately failed the community, the county-run hospital was also the only source of health care for hundreds of thousands of residents of this poverty-riven area of the city. And next to it is a gleaming new hospital that opened its doors two years ago, reorganized and built from scratch. Today, that building is still there, a hulking concrete carcass that represents one of the bleakest chapters in Los Angeles County's health history. Its previous hospital, the old Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, was dubbed 'Killer KingвЂќ and shuttered in 2007 after horrific stories of patients being given the wrong drugs, preventable deaths and other incidents of mismanagement or incompetence. Caught between Compton and Watts, the Willowbrook neighborhood is better known for a history of gang violence and race riots. LOS ANGELES - If you want a glimpse into the future of American hospitals, this corner of South Central Los Angeles might seem an unlikely stop.

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