LOS ANGELES – The patients line up at 6:30 a.m. outside the tidy clinic. Two hours later, when it opens, they’ll sit and wait some more.There are 22-year-olds holding neat piles of pills on their laps; small children whose mothers try to distract them with plastic rattles; and elderly immigrants who sit silently, staring at nothing in particular until their names are called.
And there are nearly 70 percent more of them walking into the St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Compton since nearby Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital closed its doors last summer.
The San Diego Union-Tribune. By Jennifer Steinhauer
UPDATE: According to Mary Carroll of Los Angeles County Health Services, Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital is not entirely closed. According to her, inpatient services and the emergency room were closed in 2007, not outpatient services. Please read the comments.
Esperanza Community Housing's Weblog 
July 8, 2008 at 5:28 pm
King-Harbor Hospital, renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center in August, 2007, is in fact open. There are 66 specialty outpatient clinics and an urgent care that’s open from 8 a.m. to midnight, daily. On June 18, 2008, the clinic opened a new Ambulatory Surgery Center, with a grand opening planned later in the fall. Inpatient services and the emergency room were closed in 2007, not outpatient services, hence the misperception that the entire facility is closed.
July 10, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Thank you for putting the quote from the linked article in context.
We would also like to commend St. John’s Well Child and Family Center — a long time partner of Esperanza — for being featured in this article as an institution that is providing and expanding care to our community at a time when services are oftentimes being lost.