A former discharge planner at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital says she was suspended, investigated, and ultimately fired after she raised repeated internal alarms that Medicare patients were being funneled toward a single preferred home health vendor instead of being allowed to choose their own provider. Kimberlee Saffore, who was hired as a discharge planner in January 2025, filed suit against the Willowbrook hospital on Thursday, alleging retaliation and wrongful termination.
According to MyNewsLA.com, the suit alleges that starting in January 2025, Medicare patients were referred to a particular home health vendor without being permitted to select their preferred provider. Discharge planners are healthcare professionals responsible for coordinating a patient's transfer to home care or another facility, and Saffore claims that by February 2025 she had already raised concerns to management about a specific referral she believed improperly steered a patient toward the hospital's preferred vendor.
Saffore's complaint states that by April 2025 she had come to believe the alleged referral practices violated both state and federal law, and she formally reported that employees were referring patients to the preferred vendor and interfering with patients' right to choose their own provider. The following month, she says she escalated the matter further by reporting suspected unlawful referral and kickback conduct through the hospital's internal compliance line.
Suspension Followed Compliance Complaint, Suit Says
Hospital management audited Saffore's patient accounts in May 2025, according to the suit, and by June 2025 she was placed on investigatory suspension. The following month, in July 2025, the hospital terminated her employment, which the suit describes as being done on a false and pretextual basis. Saffore is now seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, along with statutory penalties and damages.
Hospital spokesperson Tony Weiss offered a brief response, telling the outlet, “We have no comment on pending litigation.” Saffore's suit states she lost income and suffered emotional distress as a result of her termination.
Why Patient Choice in Discharge Planning Matters
The allegations touch on protections built into federal Medicare rules. Under 42 CFR § 482.43, participating hospitals must give discharging patients a complete list of available, Medicare-certified home health agencies in their area and preserve each patient's freedom to choose a preferred post-acute provider, according to the Federal Register. Steering patients toward a single vendor without offering that choice would run counter to that federal standard.
The Anti-Kickback Statute adds another layer of exposure. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b(b), offering or receiving anything of value to induce or reward referrals reimbursable by federal health programs is a felony punishable by fines up to $25,000, up to five years in prison, and exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid, according to Eisner Gorin LLP. Federal regulators have also sharpened their focus on this exact kind of arrangement: in June 2026, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General issued Advisory Opinion No. 26-15, warning that paid electronic referral systems used during hospital discharge planning create significant kickback risks when they give subscribing home health agencies preferential access over competitors who don't pay, per Barnes & Thornburg.
California's Whistleblower Protections Could Favor Saffore
Saffore's timeline of internal reports could work in her favor under state law. California Labor Code Section 1102.5 bars employers from retaliating against workers who report suspected statutory or regulatory violations, and under Senate Bill 497, which took effect January 1, 2024, employers face a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per violation, payable directly to the retaliated worker, according to Liebert Cassidy Whitmore. That same law created a 90-day rebuttable presumption of retaliation, meaning an adverse employment action taken within 90 days of a protected disclosure is presumed retaliatory. Saffore's suspension came roughly a month after her compliance-line report, a gap that would fall well within that 90-day window.
A Hospital Built to Fill a Void, Now Straining Under Demand
Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital is a 131-bed private, non-profit safety-net hospital that opened in Willowbrook in July 2015, filling a gap left after its county-run predecessor, Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, lost federal accreditation and closed in August 2007 amid severe patient care lapses. That closure left South Los Angeles without a local emergency hospital for eight years, a history that still shapes how seriously the community treats questions of institutional oversight.
Roughly 80% of patients at the hospital rely on Medi-Cal, and nearly 95% of emergency department visits involve patients covered by Medi-Cal, Medicare, or no insurance at all, according to Kaiser Permanente. The hospital's emergency department, originally built to handle 25,000 visits annually, now treats roughly 125,000 patients a year, prompting Kaiser Permanente to commit $32 million toward expanding it — a funding pledge Hoodline detailed last month. MLK Community Healthcare has also been bracing for projected annual cuts of $80 million to $100 million in Medicaid funding, adding to the financial pressure across the safety-net system during the period Saffore says she was raising her concerns.
