Los Angeles-based Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital is preparing to see $80 million to $100 million in Medicaid cuts annually tied to HR 1, highlighting an urgency to keep the hospital operational for patients in the community.
“The financial threat is real,” Elaine Batchlor, MD, CEO of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, told Becker’s. “We would not be able to operate the hospital with $80 [million] to $100 million less in revenue. That’s just a reality.”
About 80% of the private, safety-net hospital’s patients are covered by Medicaid, Dr. Batchlor said. Overall, patient revenue covers less than the hospital’s fiscal year 2026 budget, with 31% coming from Los Angeles County funding, 25% from state supplemental funding and the remaining 44% from billed patient revenue, according to information shared with Becker’s from the hospital.
The hospital’s background is also complex. After the original facility shut down in 2007 due to loss of its Joint Commission and CMS certifications, the existing facility was built and opened in 2015.
A physician by training, Dr. Batchlor said the hospital’s history and years without care cannot happen again. Despite Medicaid cut concerns, MLK Community Hospital’s emergency department remains busy, jumping from 120,965 ED visits in 2023 to 130,039 in 2024.
“We know what that looks like,” she said. “It looks like a community that lacks many social assets and has a disproportionately high burden of illness, and where residents have great difficulty accessing care. If our hospital were to close, the community would lose that access point, residents’ health conditions would deteriorate and it would also put a burden on surrounding community hospitals.”
Dr. Batchlor said the hospital has the fewest beds per 100,000 people of any service planning area in the county, along with an area shortage of 1,500 physicians and few rehab facilities, pharmacies and urgent care centers.
“If the hospital goes away, it’s just going to make things worse,” she said.
Instead of cutting services, MLK Community Hospital is looking into multiple funding sources. In June, county voters passed a temporary half-cent sales tax, which will run for five years. The hospital is hopeful it will get revenue from the sales tax.
The hospital is also seeking funds from Measure B, a voter-approved tax on real estate construction to support emergency and trauma services. Dr. Batchlor said given the hospital has the highest volume of Medicaid emergency department visits in California, it should be a good candidate to receive some of those funds.
“We are also working very constructively with our county partners and our state partners to do what we can to restructure our funding model to adapt to the changes that are coming in HR 1,” Dr. Batchlor said.
Lastly, the hospital is pursuing care innovations to improve care and help its bottom line, including a diabetes management program and empath unit that will open this summer to provide care to patients in behavioral health crises that come into its ED.
“Hospital care is better financed than community-based prevention and disease management,” she said. “We’re trying to continue to provide those programs and expand those programs because ultimately they are more efficient than waiting for people to end up with some advanced complication.”
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