For months, officials at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center have been buzzing with excitement about the anticipated opening of their new home.
But that opening has been delayed repeatedly, most recently last week. Officials announced that the move to the new facility would be postponed from Oct. 17 to Nov. 7, citing challenging schedules for the hospital and state inspectors, as well as last-minute work not yet completed by sub-contractors.
Two main concerns loom over the $1.02-billion medical center's opening: Are there too few beds, and will there be enough doctors to fully staff the expanded emergency room when it opens?
There are 824 licensed acute-care beds at the current County-USC hospital (most recently the facility has been filling about 590 of them), but there are only 600 such beds in the new building next door. Those 600 won't offer much breathing space for the hospital if, say, a bad flu season overwhelms emergency rooms throughout Southern California. (On Thursday, 588 licensed beds were in use at the current center; if the old hospital had moved into the new facility last week, it would have been about 98% full.)
"Our concern is the peaks," said Dr. Stephanie L. Hall, County-USC's chief medical officer. Hall likened the situation to a glass of water filled close to the brim; adding more water causes a spill.
A shortage of beds would cause a backup of emergency room patients waiting for admission, causing wait times to lengthen, according to a report submitted to the county Board of Supervisors in July. The report warned that the "hospital opens at the tipping point," and said that the newness of the facility might attract a 5% to 15% increase in patient arrivals.
Officials have been working on several measures to reduce the number of patients who are in the hospital at any given time.
Last month, the hospital, located two miles east of downtown Los Angeles in Boyle Heights, began moving some patients to the county-run Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey, Hall said. There are 25 acute-care beds at Rancho, and if necessary, it can ramp up to hold 50.
County-USC has also worked to reduce inefficient down time. For example, several years ago, it took an average of three days from the time an X-ray was ordered to the time it was completed and read by a physician. Now, it takes less than 24 hours, said Pete Delgado, County-USC's chief executive. The hospital has also reduced delays in giving prescriptions to patients waiting to be discharged.
