Hospital Funding

The Legal Aid Foundation called a news conference on June 6 to protest and help prevent drastic cuts in health care funding for the Los Angeles County hospitals, and a story appeared in The Times on June 7 (Metro).

Sworn declarations were submitted by concerned physicians and nurses to prevent proposed drastic cuts in health care funding for county hospitals. I responded to the proposed elimination of all outpatient clinics at King-Drew Medical Center, with special reference to the Chest Clinic (one of my areas of responsibility at the hospital).

In my declaration, I referred to the adverse effects of closing the clinics on patients with specific pulmonary disorders. One of several lung diseases discussed was asthma. I declared that “there is an increasing incidence of death among young asthmatics who are non-compliant or receive delayed care for acute attacks. Unnecessary deaths can be prevented by effective, prompt outpatient care.”

Claire Spiegel in her news article, “Preventable Deaths at County Hospitals” (June 7), extracted the above quotation out of context, rearranged the statement to: lack of “effective prompt outpatient care” as the cause for “an increasing incidence of death among young asthmatics.” This creates the false impression that due to lack of effective prompt outpatient care at our hospital there was an increasing incidence of deaths among our young asthmatic patients.

The facts are to the contrary. Most of our patients come to us late in the course of their illness and critically ill. Nevertheless, many lives are saved.

In fact, nationwide we at King have one of the lowest mortality rates for gunshot wounds to the chest and heart.

ALBERT H. NIDEN, M.D.

Chief Pulmonary Disease

Professor of Medicine

Charles R. Drew University

of Medicine and Science

and UCLA