CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 16, 2011 | By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times
Only 24 weeks into her pregnancy, Haydee Ibarra's doctors told her that her baby wasn't getting the blood and oxygen she needed to survive. If she stayed inside the womb, the baby would certainly die. If she was born, her chances weren't much better and she could face a lifetime of health complications. Ibarra, 22, and Yovani Guido, 24, implored the doctors to do everything possible to save their daughter. And they did. PHOTOS: The third smallest baby on record On Aug. 30, Melinda Guido was born four months premature at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 30, 2011 | By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times
A wall-mounted computer screen in the call center at L.A. County/USC Medical Center showed the emergency room was full. Ambulances were supposed to take patients elsewhere on this Friday night. But they kept coming — some because it was the closest ER, others because the injuries were so severe only a trauma center could handle them. "We get them from outside hospitals, from clinics, from the field, from the jail, from police, from everywhere — everywhere," said Alma Aviles, a nurse supervisor.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 8, 2011 | By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times
State public health officials have fined 12 California hospitals for medical errors that hurt or killed patients, according to a report released Wednesday. Three of the hospitals — L.A. County/USC Medical Center, Torrance Memorial Medical Center and Brotman Medical Center — are in Los Angeles County. The penalties were issued for errors such as leaving foreign objects in patients' bodies during surgery and administrating the wrong medication. They occurred in 2009 and 2010.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 6, 2011 | By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times
Dr. Max Harry Weil, an influential pioneer of critical-care medicine and the founding president of the Weil Institute of Critical Care Medicine in Rancho Mirage, has died. He was 84. Weil died of prostate cancer July 29 at his home in Rancho Mirage, said his daughter, Dr. Susan Weil. The Swiss-born Weil was known as one of the world's leading clinicians, educators and researchers in critical-care medicine, a multidisciplinary specialty dealing with the care and treatment of the most acutely ill and injured patients.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 25, 2010 | By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
Overcrowding persists at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center's emergency room, but hospital officials have improved how they manage the crowds, decreasing patient wait times and the number of patients who leave without being seen, according to county officials. The average wait time decreased from 11 hours and 10 minutes in September to 10 hours and 20 minutes in October, county health officials wrote in a report submitted Tuesday to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 10, 2010 | By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
Overcrowding remains a persistent problem at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center's emergency room even as conditions deemed dangerous have eased in the last two months, county officials said Tuesday. "Dangerously" overcrowded conditions in the 600-bed hospital's emergency room decreased to an average of about five hours a day in October, down from a high of 16 hours a day in August, county health officials told supervisors Tuesday. Carol Meyer, the county health services department's chief network officer, said over the last two months the hospital built a "rapid early medical evaluation" area in the emergency room so that every patient sees a doctor or nurse within an hour of arrival, similar to a system in place for about two years at the county's Harbor- UCLA Medical Center emergency room.