Local News in Brief : Talks on Doctors’ Protest

Private talks resumed Thursday between Los Angeles County officials and the union that represents physicians in training at three county-run hospitals, raising the possibility of an early end to a “work action” the doctors have staged to protest county policies.

Elliot Marcus, director of the county’s employee relations program, said that the unofficial talks were not prompted by the doctors’ protest and that the timing was coincidental.

The young doctors, who work at County-USC Medical Center, Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, on Wednesday morning began protesting the county’s decision to contract out the provision of medical services at County-USC.

The work action involves delaying discharges and increasing patient admissions in order to fill the hospitals to capacity, thereby bringing pressure on the county from private hospitals no longer able to transfer indigent patients to the county facilities.

Several doctors involved in the action said Thursday that they were succeeding in closing the hospitals to patient transfers. But the administrators of all three hospitals insisted that they could see little or no impact from the action and that patient loads remain normal.