Hospital’s cuts sow anxiety in South Los Angeles

Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, CA, has been a key healthcare provider to nearby residents for nearly a century, but now some patients and activists worry that recent cuts and other changes are diminishing its role in the community. Since taking over the hospital in late 2007, the medical center's new owner has shuttered departments, laid off 13% of its staffers, and canceled most private insurance contracts. To the disproportionately low-income and uninsured residents of South Los Angeles and other nearby communities, the changes at Centinela are another blow after a long spate of hospital cutbacks and closures throughout the area.