Local News in Brief : Bonds for Trauma Center

The hospital authority of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center has voted unanimously to float a $5-million bond issue to finance construction of a new trauma center at the large county hospital in Watts.

The action, which must be approved by Los Angeles County supervisors, would enable the county to raise money from the private sector to build a single-story, 22-bed trauma center designed to accommodate the hospital’s growing load of emergency patients.

The hospital authority also recommended that the supervisors earmark sufficient funds in next year’s budget to enable the hospital to replace obsolete and broken medical equipment valued at about $2 million.

At the request of Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, the hospital authority met Thursday for the first time in more than a year. The meeting followed complaints by the hospital’s medical director that King’s emergency facilities are overloaded with trauma patients and ill-equipped to handle additional patients from private downtown emergency rooms that have threatened to stop accepting rescue ambulances on Aug. 1.