Hospital Emergency Care

Private and public hospital emergency departments serve South Central Los Angeles. Map 4 shows the location of twenty-six hospitals in and around South Central Los Angeles that provided most of the care for the injured. Most of the receiving hospitals are located around the periphery of the civil disturbance area, not within the community. On a day to day basis, patients in South Central Los Angeles who are unable to pay for their care, are transported by the EMS system to both public and private hospitals. However, because of nursing and other shortages, patients frequently cannot be transferred to County facilities. This overburdens the private facilities' critical care units causing diversion of the hospital service and preventing admission of additional patients from their communities. Hospital services throughout the community are routinely closed to critically ill or injured persons (Dixon, 1987). When this occurs, critically ill patients are transported to more distant facilities for care. The availability of and access to trauma care is a major problem for South Central Los Angeles. "There are no private sector trauma centers left in the South Central, Central, or near West Central Los Angeles areas, and public trauma facilities that serve these areas are seriously overburdened" (Dixon, 1987). Clearly, South Central Los Angeles' existing emergency medical care system has severe problems with providing care. A central question must be if and how these problems affected this systems ability to provide care to the injured from the civil disturbance.

Medical Care for the Injured

Continue to Injuries and Deaths

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